Display info on deliverable supply, position limits for agri products: Sebi to commexes

With an aim to provide necessary information to the stakeholders, Sebi today asked commodity exchanges to "prominently" display details of deliverable supply of agricultural commodities on their websites in a prescribed format.

The deliverable supply for an agricultural commodity is "production plus imports".

This will come into effect immediately, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in a circular.

As per the Sebi, commodity bourses need to disclose about name and units of the commodities; source of data; average deliverable supply (production plus imports) during past five financial year; current year deliverable supply, classification of the agricultural commodities on the basis of -- sensitive, broad and narrow.

Also, they also need to disseminate information about members as well as client limit along with position limits for each of the commodity traded on their exchanges.

According to Sebi, the exchanges "shall prominently disseminate on their websites" such information in a prescribed format.

In July last year, Sebi had prescribed a principle based methodology for revising the commodity-wise numerical value of overall client level open position limits for agricultural commodities with reference to the 'deliverable supply' of the such commodities available in the country during a financial year.

Further, the agricultural commodities were classified into three categories -- sensitive, broad and narrow.

Sensitive agricultural commodities are prone to government interventions or could have seen frequent price manipulation in the past.