NCDEX world's third largest agricultural exchange: UNCTAD

New Delhi, Sep 25 (UNI) Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has placed India's leading commodity exchange National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) as the world's third largest agricultural exchange.

Pointing out that NCDEX has undergone a spectacular rise as a hub for agricultural trade in the sub-continent, the UNCTAD Report by Mr Adam Gross, Associate Economic Affairs Officer, says that agriculture has been leading the commodities charge over the past five years, in volume terms at least.

''Developing country exchanges, particularly those in China and India, can now clearly be recognised as major liquidity centres in world commodity markets with eight of the world's top 15 commodity figures exchanges in 2005 located in Asia,'' Mr Gross said in the report.

According to the report, commodity exchanges can play an important role in overcoming infrastructure obstacles and connect marginalised producers to the market in India.

Agricultural trading at NCDEX, which stood at 6.5 million contracts in 2004, increased by 562 per cent -- more than six-fold rise -- to over 43 million traded contracts in 2005. ''This made NCDEX the world's third largest agricultural exchange, trading a considerably higher volume of agricultural contracts than the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT),'' said the UNCTAD Report on ''The World's Commodity Exchanges: Past, Present, Future''.

''Most of our members and their terminals are located in smaller towns. This dispersal of points of trading terminals helps people from all over the country access the exchange for hedging their price risk,'' said Mr P H Ravikumar, MD and CEO of NCDEX.

''To enable grass root level primary producers benefits from the Exchange platforms and gain direct forward market linkages, the Exchange is already gearing itself to launch spot agricultural platforms in select states which will be gradually expanded to cover the entire country,'' he added.

NCDEX is seeking to further impart transparency to future trading in agricultural commodities by launching spot trading on the exchanges' on their online trading platform, Mr Ravikumar said.

NCDEX offers trading facilities to its trading and clearing members located across 550 centres in India and around 800 members trade over 8,500 terminals. It offers a portfolio of contracts of over 50 commodities including commodities in agricultural, bullion, base metals and energy.

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