Commodity futures double in Apr-Dec

Turnover on Indian commodity futures exchanges almost doubled in the April to December period from a year earlier as prices of energy and metals logged record surge.

Commodities worth Rs 27.4 trillion ($617 billion) were traded between April and December, compared with Rs 14.08 trillion a year earlier, the regulator Forward Markets Commission (FMC) said in a statement today.

Commodities trading broke records in many countries in 2006 as economic expansion in China and India, the world's fastest-growing major economies, and lack of new capacities, sent oil, gold, copper and zinc prices to records.

Domestic exchanges are closed to overseas funds, although the country is the world's largest user of gold and the No 2 producer of sugar and rice.

Turnover on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) , the world's third-biggest bullion bourse after exchanges in London and Tokyo, and the nation's 22 other bourses surged fourfold to Rs 21.34 trillion ($479 billion) in the year ended March.

MCX, in which Fidelity International, a unit of the world's biggest mutual fund company, owns 9 per cent, and the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd (Ncdex), accounted for more than 90 per cent of the trades. Goldman Sachs owns 7 per cent of the Ncdex.

Commodity exchanges in China traded record volumes in 2006, eclipsing Japan where transactions fell 18 per cent.

Turnover on China's three bourses "� the Shanghai Futures Exchange, Dalian Commodities Exchange and Zhengzhou Commodities Exchange "� rose 56 per cent to a record 21 trillion yuan ($2.7 trillion).

Volume surged 39 per cent to 449 million contracts, the China Futures Association said on its Web site on January 4.