The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Chemical units for total ban on export of molasses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 14, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Chemical units for total ban on export of molasses

Staff Reporter

Free inter-State movement of molasses suggested

CHENNAI: A total ban on molasses and alcohol export is one of the measures the Chemical Industries Association wants the Centre to initiate towards ensuring their reasonable prices.

Other measures it recommended were ensuring total utilisation of molasses in "one or other productive manner," free inter-State movement of molasses and industrial and fuel alcohol blended with prescribed denaturants and encouraging production of non-molasses based alcohol for potable purposes.

It urged the Centre to take these steps in the event of sugar mills and distilleries not coming forward to negotiate and agree on an acceptable pricing formula for the sugarcane by-products.

Association president P.K.N. Panicker made these suggestions in the context of Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora's recent announcement scrapping the process of national oil companies buying ethanol at negotiated prices.

The Minister, instead, directed the companies to procure the sugarcane byproduct for use as a blend in petrol through an open tender system.

Detailing the developments leading to the Minister's directive, Mr. Panicker, in a release, said: "We fully agree and support that the sugar and ethanol producers should get reasonable prices and profit."

But they should not create situations in which the alcohol-based chemical industry and the oil industry find it impossible to procure alcohol and operate within reasonable economic parameters. If the Centre implements the four-pronged measures, they will prove beneficial to the economy in the long run, he said.

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