World Bank ”Flooded” with Ethanol Fund Requests

The World Bank’s private sector arm is being deluged with funding requests for ethanol projects around the globe as crude oil prices trade near record highs, an International Finance Corp. official said Thursday.

“We’ve been flooded with requests from lots of countries. There’s some requests from Latin America, we’ve had several from Africa and one or two in East Asia,” IFC’s Marcelo Lessa said from a cane-ethanol mill in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state.