As per the report from USDA, India's ethanol production is pegged at 2,170 million litres in 2012, a rise of 29% as compared to 1,681 million litres production last year. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has stated that this increase in ethanol production can be attributed to the fact of higher sugar production in the country. For 2011-12 marketing year ending September, the country is expected to manufacture 26 million tonnes of sugar. This expectation is higher and also exceeds the domestic demand of 22 million tonnes.
Further, including import of 80 million litres of ethanol this year, the total supply of ethanol in the country is expected to be 2,901 million litres. On the other hand the domestic consumption of ethanol is estimated at 2,085 million litres this year, a marginal rise of 4.5% compared to 1,995 million litres in 2011.
The USDA report points that for manufacturing of portable liquor about 880 million litres of ethanol is likely to be used while 720 million litres will be consumed for industrial use and 400 million litres for blended gasoline in 2012.
The government through its ambitious Ethanol Blending Program has mandated a 5% ethanol blend in gasoline. However, due to procedural delays by various state governments and on failure to set ethanol pricing formula this programme has not picked up yet. India has got 330 distilleries out of which 140 have got the capacity to distill around 2 billion litres of conventional ethanol per year. This conventional ethanol will help meet the demand for 5% mandatory blending of ethanol with petrol.
Ethanol and alcohol production in India depends largely on availability of sugar molasses, a byproduct of sugar production.
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