New Delhi Coal India will need to increase domestic coal price by 8-21% during the current 12th Five-Year Plan to offset the impact of the high cost of coal that it may have to import to meet at least 80% of the fuel requirement of power companies as per contractual terms.

The company, which is struggling to step up production to meet the power sector’s fuel demand, has projected coal import requirement at 18 million tonnes (mt) in the current year (2012-13), 45 mt in 2013-14, 38 mt in 2014-15 and 19 mt in 2015-16. But it expects to be able to meet the power sector’s fuel demand from indigenous production alone in 2016-17.