Philippines urged to review ethanol incentives

The Philippines needs to review a plan that requires gasoline products to be blended with at least 5% of ethanol by 2009, as investment for the production of sugar-based ethanol has been lower than expected, a sugar industry official said. To implement the plan, the country needs to build at least seven ethanol plants producing a total of 268 million liters of ethanol a year. Only one plant is currently under construction. Maybe we need to put in place more incentives in order to attract investors,” said Archimedes Amarra, executive director of the Philippine Sugar Millers Association, Inc. According to him, the landed cost of imported ethanol is around Php29-30 (US$0.64-66) a liter, a price level that “is only break-even for local producers,” he said. (September 4, 2007)