India prolonged a mandate to energy crops to import coal till March because the driest August in additional than a century pushed electrical energy demand to a report, placing a pressure on provides of the nation’s essential technology gasoline.

Plants designed to run on home coal have been requested to import 4% of their provides of the gasoline by March to keep away from outages, extending an earlier direction to purchase from abroad till the tip of this month, federal energy secretary Pankaj Agarwal mentioned in an interview.