India extends ethanol soft financing program through March 31

In India, the Hindu Business Line newspaper reports the government has decided to extend the soft loan subsidy program through March 31 to give investors more time to get their projects going. The program was first launched in 2018 to help speed up the increase in ethanol production capacity with a first focus on sugar mills who had weak balance sheets and couldn’t access traditional finance to invest in ethanol. The program was later extended to include stand-alone distilleries and grain-based ethanol production.