UPDATE 1-Philippines to import ethanol from Brazil, Thailand

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MUMBAI, April 2 (Reuters) - The Philippines plans to import about 170 million litres of ethanol from Brazil and Thailand in 2009, Archie Amarra, executive director of Philippines Sugar Millers Association Inc, said on Wednesday.

The Philippine government had passed a biofuel act in 2007 that made it mandatory to mix 5 percent of ethanol in gasoline from February 2009, he said.

"It will translate into 200 million litres of ethanol a year," Amarra told Reuters on the sidelines of a sugar conference in Mumbai.

"Our production capacity is not much... we have one ethanol plant with capacity of 30 million litres per year."

The government has made it mandatory to mix 10 percent ethanol in gasoline by 2,011, he said.

The ethanol imports would be a temporary measure as the Philippines would boost capacity to meet its domestic needs within the next five years, Amarra said.

The Philippines expect to produce 2.256 million tonnes of raw sugar in the current sugar year that started on Sept. 1, 2007.

The country, which consumes about 2 mln tonnes of sugar a year, produced 2.238 million tonnes of raw sugar in the previous year. (Reporting by Arpan Mukherjee; Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)