The daily telecast of futures prices of food items by MCX and other commodity bourses on television channels is not impacting the spot market, Parliament was informed today.
"Daily telecast of the prices doesn't have any impact (on the spot market," Minister of State for Agriculture K V Thomas said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Also, there is no evidence to prove that futures trading in commodities or the dissemination of prices thereof have fueled speculative price rise, he said.
"To blame the futures market without addressing real causes of price rise will yield no tangible results in curbing inflation as has been proved by suspension of futures trading," the minister noted.
Highlighting the benefits of the telecast of futures prices on the electronic and print media, Thomas said the information on futures price creates awareness among stakeholders about the likely price trend in the future and enables them to plan their economic activity.
It also increases transparency in prices, discourages access to prices by a few vested interest, improve bargaining power of farmers besides helping policy makers to pro-actively realign policies to meet supply-demand gaps, he added.
At present, there are five national level and 19 regional level commodity bourses in the country.
