A 5.5. What are the assumptions for that expansion to succeed relying on a steady ethanol market?
There have to be profitable prices for sugar-cane, sugar and ethanol. As to external factors, the maintenance of mean international oil prices in excess of USD 45/ barrel (for the current state of the art in Brazils ethanol production) is an ethanol production-inducing factor. Access to export markets (although these are secondary compared to the domestic market) requires the countries involved to adopt governmental policies providing for the mandatory use of ethanol, bilateral agreements that may establish favorable access conditions to the product and inhibit protectionist measures, reduction of import tax rates for ethanol, maintenance of the favorable marketing conditions such as the the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and the development of new technologies aiming at a large-scale internationalization of ethanol production in the long term. For the domestic market, the setting of a single ICMS rate for all Brazilian states at the same level as So Paulos (12 percent), maintenance of th
