During their visit, the members--Lammon Rutten (Unctad) and Deepak Ahluwalia (World Bank, New Delhi office)--will acquaint themselves with the workings of the domestic commodity exchanges. They will appraise the members of the comexes on the need to improve the overall working of their respective exchanges, including setting up of warehouses for smoother trading in commodity futures as is the practice in majority of international comexes.

For this purpose, the World Bank team will address on Wednesday members of various comexes at the office of the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), Mumbai.

On Tuesday, the team visited the exchange premises of the East India Cotton Association (EICA) in Mumbai. EICA kicked off cotton futures in December last.

The visit is understood to precede disbursement of around $500,000 grant to the Government for the overall improvement of the FMC and the various comexs in the country. The World Bank had approved disbursal of the grant to the Government last November.

Meanwhile, The Bombay Oilseeds & Oils Exchange has organised a `Castor Meet 1999' at Ahmedabad on February 28 jointly with The Ahmedabad Commodity Exchange (ACE, formerly known as The Ahmedabad Seed Merchants' Association) and the Rajkot Seed Oil and Bullion Merchants' Association.

The `Cator meet 1999' will be inaugurated by Gujarat's finance minister.

NK Industries chairman and managing director Nimesh K Patel will chair the seminar.

The purpose of the seminar, according to the exchange, is to assess the castorseed crop situation for the 1998-99 season, and to discuss the sales tax problems faced by traders and export promotion of castor oil.

One of the most important reasons of the semiar is to appraise the cross-section of traders in castorseed and its oil in and around the Gujarat region about the launch of international castor oil futures contracts. The Government and the FMC have permitted BOOE to trade in international futures of castor oil. It expects FMC approval some time next month.