Centre asks states to facilitate entrepreneurs in setting up ethanol capacity

The Centre on Friday asked state governments to facilitate entrepreneurs in setting up ethanol production capacity, under a government scheme, by arranging land for the project and getting early green clearances.

The Union Food Ministry has come out with a scheme under which subsidised loan is given to companies keen to expand their ethanol production capacity or set up new distilleries for producing first generation ethanol from feed stocks.

The scheme, which was notified on January 14 this year, was announced in the wake of the government aiming 10 per cent blending of ethanol with petrol by 2022, and 20 per cent blending by 2025.

In a statement, the ministry said Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey recently held a virtual meeting with states governments and industry associations including Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) and requested them to promote the scheme and ensure maximum participation of entrepreneurs.

''State governments were also requested to facilitate entrepreneurs in arranging land for the project, to get environment clearance at the earliest and in setting up of distilleries,'' the ministry said.

It was also suggested that every state should constitute a Steering Committee under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary and comprising of officers of State Excise Authority, State Pollution Control Board, Industry Department, Industry Associations, entrepreneurs and officers of central government to review the implementation of the scheme on monthly basis and to ensure that bottlenecks, if any, faced by entrepreneurs are resolved in a time bound manner, it added.

In the meeting, the participants were explained about the benefits of ethanol blended with petrol programme.

It was informed that excess sugar of about 60 lakh tonne will be diverted for ethanol making that would help sugar mills to make timely payments of cane dues to farmers. Additional utilisation of food grains of about 135 lakh tonne would also help in increasing the income of farmers.

Further, investment by entrepreneurs will help in creation of employment in rural areas, distributed ethanol production will help in reduction of transportation cost of ethanol and reduction in crude oil import will help India to become self-reliant in petroleum sector, the ministry said.

With the implementation of the scheme, the government said ethanol production capacity in the country would increase from present 684 crore litres to the required level of 1,500 crore litres by 2025, in order to achieve blending targets, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)