Commodities repositories to be launched from next week

Finance and trading in negotiable warehouse receipts soon; NCDEX has established one of the two repositories

Trading in negotiable warehouse receipts, a decade-old idea, will be a reality next week, when two repository record-keeping agencies start operations.

The Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) has licensed these two repositories. These will keep records of goods stored and moved from regulated warehouses, including warehouse receipt transfers, the same way share transfer records are kept by depositories.

One of the two has been established by the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), an agriculture-centric one. The other, CDSL, has been promoted by the BSE exchange. They're going online when launched next week in Delhi.

"We have been working on repository and