A report filed with the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agricultural Information Network on April 11 discusses the Colombian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism’s (MINCIT) March 15 decision to extend its existing 20-cent-per-gallon duty on U.S. ethanol for the next five years.

Colombia currently has seven ethanol plants with a combined 660 million liters (174.35 million gallons) of capacity. Annual production has averaged 415 million liters over the past decade.

In January 2019, MINCIT formally accepted a petition filed by the Colombian Biofuels Association to investigate alleged subsidies of U.S. fuel ethanol exports. A year later, in February 2020, MINCIT issued an Essential Facts report that concluded U.S. ethanol production is subsidized, to the detriment of the Colombian industry, but not to the extent the Colombian industry alleged. In May 2020, MINCIT placed a 20-cent-per-gallon duty on U.S. ethanol imports, with that duty to remain in place for two years.

MINCIT in May 2022 accepted another petition from the Colombian biofuels industry to review the existing countervailing duty (CVD) against U.S. ethanol imports. The 20-cent-per-gallon tariff remained in place during the review period. An Essential Facts report issued by the agency in January 2023 found evidence of continued subsidies for U.S. ethanol, but uncovered no clear evidence that the 20-cent-per-gallon duty on U.S. ethanol improved the performance of Colombia’s domestic ethanol industry and recommended a reduced CVD of just over 10 cents per gallon. MINCIT, however, ignored its own findings and instead extended the existing 20-cent-per-gallon duty for five years.

A full copy of the report can be downloaded from the USDA FAS GAIN website.