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Home / Bioethanol / News INTERVIEW-Brazil promotes ethanol output abroad as exports dip
GUATEMALA CITY, June 1 (Reuters) - Brazil is encouraging sugar producers in Latin America and Africa to produce ethanol, funding studies and promising technical support in a push to convince governments to adopt the alternative fuel, a government official said on Monday.
The Brazilian agency for trade promotion and the regional Inter-American Development Bank are examining the viability of setting up ethanol refineries in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, St Kitts and Nevis and Haiti, agriculture ministry official Jose Nilton said.
"We believe the development of the world market relies on creating other producers," Nilton told Reuters in an interview after attending an international sugar conference in Guatemala last week.
"To be reliable suppliers, we must have more producers," he said.
In 2008, Brazil supplied 95 percent of ethanol exports worldwide, he said.
Nilton said exports from the world's largest sugar producer in 2008 were some 5 billion liters, as the price of oil reached $147 a barrel, but demand will slump this year as oil prices fall and there is less interest in the green fuel. [ID:nN30521670]
Brazil is expected to export 3.6 billion liters in 2009, according to government statistics. [ID:nN25439600]
"We had a very good perspective two or three years ago because of the higher price for oil but the reduction in international oil prices has reduced the interest in ethanol," Nilton said.
Ethanol output in Brazil largely goes to cover domestic demand, with over 80 percent produced in the country in 2008 consumed by the local flex-fuel car fleet that runs on ethanol or gasoline.
In an effort to boost consumption in other sugar producing nations, Brazil has promised technical support to develop infrastructure in exchange for government pledges to promote the use ethanol-gasoline blends.
Nilton said Guatemala, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Angola all had the potential to produce ethanol for the export market.
With the help of Brazilian know-how, Colombia is already the No. 2 ethanol producer after Brazil in Latin America.
Brazil has seen its sugarcane mills hard hit by the global recession. Credit and financial concerns are expected to dominate this week's three day Ethanol Summit hosted by Brazil's Sugar Cane Industry Association, or Unica. (For more on the summit see [ID:nN01431173]) (Editing by Christian Wiessner)
Date: 03.08.2009 Leave your comment
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