The turnover of commodity bourses has declined 4.5% to Rs 94.72 lakh crore till October 15 this fiscal due to sluggish investor participation in gold and silver futures, according to regulator FMC.
The exchanges had clocked a turnover of Rs 99.18 lakh crore in the year-ago period.
Except for bullion, there was substantial increase in the turnover of energy, metals and agricultural commodities during the period under the review, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) said on its website.
The business from energy items like crude oil rose by 42% to Rs 20.79 lakh crore during the April-October 15 period of the 2012-13 fiscal, against Rs 14.61 lakh crore in the same period corresponding year.
While turnover from metals like copper increased 23% to Rs 17.29 lakh crore from Rs 14.10 lakh crore, the business from farm items rose by 28% to Rs 12.88 lakh crore from Rs 10.09 lakh crore in the period under the review, according to the FMC data.
However, turnover from bullion fell 28% to Rs 43.75 lakh crore during the period, from Rs 60.36 lakh crore a year ago.
On falling business volumes, FMC Chairman Ramesh Abhishek had recently said that the regulator was "more concerned about quality of turnover not on quantity".
At present, the country has five national and 16 regional level commodity exchanges in the country. Recently, the FMC gave approval to the Universal Commodity Exchange to operate as a national bourse.