India hopes to double ethanol blending to 8% in 2018-19 sugar season

The government has provided soft loans to the first group of applications for creating ethanol capacity

The government backs the sugar industry’s demand for more financial assistance to enhance the ethanol capacity as for the first time India hopes to double blending with petrol to 8 per cent in the 2018-19 sugar season, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Friday.

So far, India has been able to blend less than 4 per cent petrol with ethanol but because of better price offered by Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), the industry feels that country will double the blending level.

Addressing the 84th Annual General Meeting of the Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), Pradhan said the sugar industry should