Brazilian watchdog steps in with ways to lower fuel prices include ethanol deregulation

In Brazil, Reuters says the country’s monopoly watchdog is exploring nine proposals that would help break the anticompetitive hold on fuel pricing, an industry often accused of corruption and collusion that led to the truckers strike this past week, bringing sugarcane mills and soybean processors among others to a screeching halt. Allowing ethanol producers to sell directly to gas stations, currently prohibited, could be allowed as part of the new proposals. The proposals should help to bring down fuel prices but only in the medium-term.