Brazil’s second largest producer of bio-diesel, Bio-Capital, is still awaiting detailed information on policies and practices from the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) in order to move ahead with a proposed investment for sugar cane cultivation and ethanol production.
Asked about developments in the investment bid, Brazil’s ambassador to Guyana Arthur VC Meyer told Stabroek News that the Brazilian businessmen were very keen on investing the sum of US$300 million to procure some 50,000 hectares of land in Region Six (East Berbice/Corentyne) for cane cultivation and to establish a distillery for the production of ethanol.
Meyer said he was seeking a meeting with Chief Executive Officer of Go-Invest Geoffrey Da Silva to follow up on the interest of the Brazilian investors. Stabroek News was on Thursday unable to contact Da Silva.
The ambassador said the Brazilians had asked for several items of information regarding Guyana’s investment policies as well as a response to their application.
Asked what he felt might be the reason for the delay, Meyer felt it was just a matter of bureaucracy. In a previous interview he had said he was confident that the Brazilian investment in ethanol in Guyana would be implemented shortly. He had said that one of the aims of the project was to export ethanol to the American market because Guyana would be in a position to benefit from some special preferential quotas for ethanol created by the American government.
Bio-Capital, he noted, had begun a similar investment in the State of Roraima in northern Brazil and it was expected that the Guyana project would complement that project.
The investors were in Guyana last November when they met Prime Minister Sam Hinds, Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce Manniram Prashad and Minister of Transport and Hydraulics Robeson Benn. They also met the Prime Minister when he was in Brazil for the last Mercosur meeting.
The Brazilian businessmen had also met officials of the Lands and Surveys Department and Chairman of the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s Board of Directors Ronald Alli. Part of Guysuco’s modernization strategy is the production of ethanol as bio-fuel to feed into the national grid.
It is expected that the Brazilians would produce ethanol for the manufacture of bio-diesel – a mixture of fossil fuel and ethanol. Bio-diesel can be used in diesel-powered cars as a fuel on its own, or mixed with diesel in order to reduce the volume of the fossil fuel. Brazil has used bio-fuel for the past three decades, mixing fossil fuels with 20% to 25% ethanol. Bio-Capital specialises in the production of bio-diesel using ethanol with vegetable oil and animal fat. (Miranda La Rose)
