Adani coal project moving ahead but slowly: Australian Minister

New Delhi, Aug 30 (IANS) The Adani Group's $16.5 billion Carmichael coal project in Australia is moving ahead albeit at a slow pace, Australia's Minister for Trade Steven Ciobo said on Wednesday.

"It is certainly moving forward... I had made the point that there have been aspects of their investment that have taken much longer than I would have liked, the government would have liked," Ciobo said during a media round table here adding, that there is a process to be followed.

"To Adani's complete credit, they have stayed the course, they have completed the process," he said.

"I think that India, the Adani company, Australia would be the beneficiaries of that."

Last week, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani told the media that construction of the project would start by October and the first coal would come out by March 2020.

He said this following dismissal of appeals filed by Australian green activists against the project this month.

A full bench of the federal court in Brisbane dismissed challenges by the Australian Conservation Foundation and native title objections from a central Queensland resident, Adrian Burragubba.

The group also got a clean chit from the adjudicating authority of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence on allegations that it inflated the declared value of goods imported under the power and infrastructure heads, which attract zero or less than 5 per cent duty.

In June, Adani announced that he had got the nod to open Australia's biggest coal mine and the project has Final Investment Decision (FID) approval, which marked the official start of one of the largest single infrastructure and job-creating developments in Australia's recent history.