FMC, NCDEX hold awareness programme

The Forward Market Commission (FMC) and the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) of India Ltd jointly organised an awareness programme in Rajkot on Saturday, to create awareness among the masses regarding the role of FMC and the kind of trading platform NCDEX provides for commodity trading across the nation.

Anupam Mishra, director, FMC said, "India has an old tradition of futures market. In the post-independent era, this market had become voiceless for many years. Though trading has picked up in the last 2-3 years, people in general still perceive commodity trading as merely a speculation `Satta?."

To give impetus to such awareness campaigns, the government is also funding the commodity exchanges, whenever required, added Mishra. NCDEX is planning to organise more such programmes by the end of 2006-07. "Of the total agro-commodities traded, 83 per cent are through NCDEX, 12 per cent through MCX and the rest through other exchanges," said V V Ganeshan, assistant VP, NCDEX Limited.

The workshop focused on gold as an important investment option along with the brent crude trading, now made available by NCDEX.

"At present, more than 90 items including major agricultural commodities, precious metal, natural gas and crude oil, are being permitted by the government to be traded vide such commodity exchanges. Rajkot being one potential destination having investor and a trader base interested in dealing in various commodities, we laid special emphasis on the presentation of gold and brent crude trading as made available on the NCDEX platform," said Bhavin Mehta, deputy manager (relationship).

More than 150 people participated in this awareness programme. "NCDEX has been recognised as the world's third largest agricultural exchange by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with nine institutional shareholders including CRISIL, ICICI Bank Ltd, IFFCO, LIC, NABARD, NSE, PNB, Canara Bank and Goldman Sachs. In terms of volumes, it recorded an average daily trade volume of about Rs 4,800 crore in April to June 2006. It ranks first in India and accounts for about 50 per cent of the volumes traded on the exchanges in India," Ganeshan said.