The Centre on Tuesday clarified that the use of rice from the Food Corporation of India (FCI´s) godowns at a discounted price of ₹ 2,000 per quintal is only an intermediary arrangement to ensure that the upcoming grain-based distilleries don´t fall short of ready feedstock and the main raw material for such distilleries will continue to be maize not rice. To ensure enough supply of ethanol for making E20 fuel by 2023, it has allocated 78,000 tonnes of rice from the FCI at a subsidised rate of ₹ 20/kg to distilleries for the current marketing year ending November.

Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said India will blend around 88.5 per cent of ethanol with petrol in supply year 2020-21 (December to November), of which around almost 13 per cent will come from non-sugarcane sources as feedstock while another 57 per cent from B heavy molasses.