An official of the Indian Pepper and Spices Trade Association, which runs the exchange, said that the bourse is yet to prepare a proper package for overseas players and until that is ready and added that there were no plans to hold roadshows.

The official, who did not wish to be identified, said first trading in dollars would have to begin in the exchange before steps to popularise it were evolved.

The roadshow for the pepper bourse had been planned even before the exchange started functioning in November 1997 to attract better international participation.

In order to attract overseas participation, government had allowed trading at the exchange in dollar in December 1998. Currently, there is only one foreign participant from Holland.

Foreign participation has been poor at the exchange inview of a perception by foreign players that repatriation of profits would be a problem.

When contacted, K Srinivasan, secretary, Union Consumers Affairs, which controls the functioning of futures exchanges through the forward markets commission, said there were at present no plans for roadshow for the pepper exchange.

The civil supplies ministry had last year come forward to allocate funds for the pepper exchange. But initial plans for holding the roadshow were put off due to reasons such as high prices for the commodity and south-east Asian currency turmoil.

The commerce ministry, too, had allocated Rs 10 lakhs through the Spices Board for popularising the pepper exchange but as IPSTA did not use it, the ministry had taken back the amount.

"We allocated Rs 10 lakhs for holding roadshows for the International Pepper Exchange. As the amount was not used, we have taken it back," SM Acharya, joint secretary in the commerce ministry said.

Trade sources said international contracts in pepper had beenlaunched "prematurely".

Various assurances had been given to put the futures trade on track but without success, they said.

The IPSTA official said it would be at least two to three months before things were put in order at the pepper bourse.

The international pepper exchange is the first of its kind in the world but has been hit by low volume turnover ever since its inception.

In contrast to the lukewarm trade at the global futures counter, the domestic futures has been doing very good business for the last four decades.