India’s prime minister ordered the country’s state-run coal mining giant on Wednesday to guarantee supplies to the private power sector in a bid to alleviate the nation’s chronic energy shortages. Coal India, responsible for 80 percent of India’s coal output, will sign 20-year fuel supply agreements with those power plants having a capacity of more than 50,000 megawatts, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office said in a statement. This is “a major step forward in solving the problems of power sector in the country and is likely to boost investors’ confidence in India’s power sector,” the statement said. The announcement came after Singh pledged last month to ease endemic power shortages in the country of 1.2 billion people at a meeting with top executives from India’s power sector.