Rio de Janeiro – The Brazilian production of ethanol hit an all-time high in 2015, reaching 30 billion liters, an increase of 6% over 2014. The data is from the Energy Research Company (EPE, in the Portuguese acronym), which released it this Tuesday (10) within the survey Biofuel Juncture Analysis in Brazil 2015.
According to the survey, the main factors to drive the record production were the good crop of sugar cane and government measures that increased the level of interest over ethanol, such as the percentage raise of anhydrous ethanol in gas C; the recovery of the Contribution of Incidence under Economic Dominion (Cide) and the raise of the PIS/Cofins (Social Integration Program/Social Security Financing Contribution) for gas A.
The survey done by EPE, the company responsible for the country’s energy planning, underscores that last year Brazil processed 660 million tons of sugar cane. The state-run company showed that sugar had a decline in production, reaching 34 million tons, a decline driven by low prices of the product in the international market.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
