The share of agri-commodities futures trading volume on the national and regional commodities exchanges in the country has come down by half to14% of the aggregate value of all the traded commodities during the first four months (April/July) of current fiscal compared with 29% in the same period of previous year 2007-08 following the de-listing of four major agri-commodities announced by the government.
The total value of futures trading in agricultural commodities, during the review period, was down to Rs 2.31 lakh crore from Rs 3.3 lakh crore in the same period last year.
Aggregate trading value of all the commodities traded on the national and regional commodity exchanges in the country has increased sharply to Rs 16.54 lakh crore during the review period, up by 40% from Rs 11.80 lakh crore in the same period of previous fiscal year, according to Forward Markets Commission (FMC) data.
“De-listing of four major commodities – potato, chana, soya oil and rubber has adversely affected market sentiment regarding futures trading. Majority traders are trying to avoid trading in the agri-commodities futures. Some of futures trading volume on the national exchanges have been shifted to globally-traded futures commodities like gold, silver and crude oil. As a result, trading volume of regional exchanges has suffered due to its single commodity exchange status like ours,” one of the directors at National Board of Trade (Nbot) said. Members of the National Board of Trade (Indore) mainly do futures trade in the oilseeds product mainly soya oil and its seed. During the review period, total trading volume of Nbot has declined sharply to just Rs 8,868 crore from Rs 27,481 crore. The share of bullion futures trading segment include gold and silver has gone up from 32% valued at Rs 8.23 lakh crore to 50% valued at Rs 3.84 lakh crore due to shifting of sizable portion of trading volume from agri-commodities to bullion futures trading.
Share of non-ferrous metal futures also dropped to 13% valued at Rs 2.15 lakh crore from 29% valued at Rs 3.8 lakh crore in the same period last year.