HANOI, May 29, 2007, as per Reuters:  - “Vietnam said on Monday it had approved a plan with Brazil to produce ethanol fuel in Vietnam.”

Hanoi said in a government directive it had assigned Minister of Industry Hoang Trung Hai to sign an agreement with Brazil, the world’s top ethanol exporter, to share ethanol fuel technologies.
In Brazil, ethanol fuel, a biofuel alternative to gasoline, is produced from sugar cane.

Back 25 years ago, Brazil crisscrossed the world in an effort to get other countries to adopt its technology to produce biofuels. At the time this was an issue of fuel supplies and predicted increases in the price of oil. Some countries in Latin America listened and decided to diversify the agriculture by allowing also for the production of ethanol. Some experimental plants were built and the Organization of American States (OAS) had a hand in this. But outside Latin America and the Caribbean it was basically only South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), that for political reasons of those days, did indeed build ethanol distilleries. Pakistan and India did not make such moves; the Philippines looked into it, but no practical results - so now this announcement from Vietnam seems, may be, a sign of things to come.