Brazil: Ethanol outlook - 2008

Overview

Already a global agricultural powerhouse, Brazil harbours ambitions of replacing 10 per cent of the world’s gasoline consumption with its sugarcane-based ethanol by 2020. Unfortunately, industry overexpansion, the high tariffs imposed by importing countries and a world sugar glut have all contributed to a sector tailspin during the past 18 months. These blows have been softened only by accelerating domestic ethanol consumption, which is on track to overtake local gasoline use as early...