The Centre on Friday said it has opened a six-month window till October for sugar mills and Ethanol Plants to submit fresh proposals to avail loans at a subsidised interest rate for setting up new distilleries or expanding the existing facilities for augmenting first-generation ethanol capacity in the country. To ensure that only serious project proponents are issued in-principle approval by the Union Food Ministry, a window has been opened for fresh applications from those project proponents who have acquired land for projects and obtained environmental clearance, it said.
"The six months window has been opened from April 21 to October 22," an official spokesperson told.
According to the Food Ministry, the decision will facilitate sugar mills to set up new distilleries or expand their existing distilleries and thereby help in diverting excess sugarcane/sugar to ethanol.
"New grain-based distilleries would come up in deficit states like north-eastern states, southern states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh etc. This would help in the distributed production of ethanol," the ministry said in a statement.
