Brazil's Agriculture Minister Luis Guedes Pinto said Monday that the government will unlikely raise the ethanol mix to 25% from the current 20% by Nov. 1 as requested by the ethanol industry because of supply concerns, the local Estado newswire reported.



Brazil mixes between 20% and 25% of sugarcane ethanol in regular gasoline, but lowered the volume to 20% in March because of an ethanol shortage in the local market that was causing prices to rise. Sugar millers have been pressuring the government to raise the volume to 25% since September.



Last week, lobbyists from the Sao Paulo sugarcane industry association, Unica, emerged hopeful from a meeting with Chief of Staff Dilma Rouseff that the government would increase the mixture. A 25% ethanol mix would require an additional 100 million to 120 million liters of anhydrous ethanol per month, Dow Jones Newswires reported last week.


Unica said Brazil's main sugar-producing regions should produce between 15.7 billion and 16 billion liters of ethanol this season.


Pinto made the comment at an international conference on grain warehousing in the interior of Sao Paulo state.


Brazil is the world's leading sugarcane ethanol producer and exporter.