Use of FCI rice for ethanol making only an interim measure: Centre

Will achieve 8-8.5 per cent blending with petrol this year, says food secretary Sudhanshu Pandey

The Centre on Tuesday clarified that the use of rice from Food Corporation of India (FCI’s) godowns at a discounted price of Rs 2,000 per quintal is only an intermediary arrangement to ensure that the upcoming grain based distilleries don’t fall short of ready feedstock and the main raw material for such distilleries will continue to be maize not rice.

“If you see the world over too, of the 10,000 crore litres of ethanol produced annually, around 73 per cent comes from maize and a very small proportion is from rice. In India too, surplus rice from FCI will only