The massive project, expected to produce at least 20% of the country's total fuel needs, is part of a Build, Operate and Transfer Agreement entered into between the government-owned Agricultural Rural Development Authority (ARDA) and a consortium of private investors, Macdom and Rating Investments.
The terms of the 20-year-old agreement stipulate that ARDA will provide land for the project while investors mobilise capital.
But some Zanu-PF officials, including sitting members of parliament and former MPs, are fiercely resisting the project, amid allegations that they were abusing ARDA equipment and property for personal use.
Some Ministry of Agriculture officials, who were allegedly corruptly benefiting from ARDA before the ethanol project was started, also oppose the project.
There have been complaints to parliament, and villagers have been mobilised in the Chisumbanje area to resist the development, saying it was displacing hundreds of families.
However, a parliamentary select committee which visited the area is said to have approved the development, saying it benefitted the community.
The investors and ARDA seem to have absorbed the pressure and are said to be ready to produce the ethanol starting March next year.
Documents seen by the Sunday Times show that the project has already employed 3000 locals, and, when fully operational, it will directly employ up to 7000 people.
Some villagers are being integrated into the project as sugar-cane out-growers on irrigation blocks for the ethanol plant.
The plant will be able to produce at least 100 million litres of ethanol next year, while by-products from the project include stock feed and 18 megawatts of electricity, which is to be fed into the national grid.
The design of the project is borrowed from similar plants in Brazil and the US. Ethanol fuel will be cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
Already, Macdom and Rating Investments, through their subsidiary Green Fuel, an ethanol distillery company, have imported a state-of-the-art plant from Brazil to produce the fuel.
