Oil price surge opportunity to accelerate ethanol programme: Food Secretary

At the AIDA Annual Distillers’ Conclave in New Delhi, Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra said that the world is facing the fourth world oil shock since 1979, and every crisis provides an opportunity. “There is no better time than this to push for further reforms in our ethanol blending programme. Taking advantage of the fact that we have this oil crisis. Brent crude, which was at USD 60-70 approximately just three weeks back, has shot up by almost 40%.”

Chopra said, “The blending percentage, which was just 1.5% in 2013, is now 20%. Crude oil imports have been reduced by about 277 lakh metric tons from 2014 to 2025, resulting in savings of more than 1.63 lakh crores of foreign exchange. So this has happened because of favourable government policies. But also let me give the credit where it is due because the industry is also being very receptive, taking the policy cues and ramping up the production capacity, which has gone up from about 420 crore litres in 2013-14 to about 2,000 crore litres now”.

The Secretary said that, from a policy perspective, the supply side has been addressed to a large extent. It is the demand side that needs attention. “There are different options available which the government is trying with, whether it is the increase in the blending percentage, or blending with diesel, whether it is the introduction of flex-fuel vehicles, or how do we incentivise the use of flex-fuel vehicles, what is the kind of tax treatment that we give to these flex-fuel vehicles?”

Regarding FCI rice being supplied to grain-based distilleries, he said, “What would be available would be broken rice for ethanol production from the next ethanol season. We have done this pilot in 5 states this year to reduce the broken rice that we are supplying under the public distribution system. We would be approaching the government and the cabinet to ensure that we can present this and get the approval, whereby the rice that we will be supplying in the public distribution system will have 10% broken. So that additional 15% broken that is getting generated, about 90 lakh tons approximately broken will get generated once we can ramp it up across the country”.

Source: https://www.chinimandi.com/oil-price-surge-opportunity-to-accelerate-ethanol-programme-food-secretary/