Daily turnover rises to Rs 3cr at Bikaner comex

The Bikaner Commodity Exchange (BCE) has made a comeback in agri commodities trading with an average daily turnover of Rs 3-3.25 crore from 'nil' in the beginning of this year.

Set up in 2002 with the support of commodity traders of Rajasthan, the exchange began its journey with a modest fortnightly turnover of Rs 10-15 lakh through the open outcry system. It hit the peak in 2005 with a turnover of Rs 100 crore.

The success of the national commodity exchanges including MCX, NCDEX and NMCE lured BCE to go online towards the end of the first half of 2006 at an expenditure of Rs 30 lakh.

But within a mere five months, the volume and turnover on the exchange's platform fell to 'nil' - despite connectivity and wider reach across the country.

Finally, the board members of BCE voted against online trading and on December 12 last year the exchange decided to discontinue it. It went back to the open outcry system on February 12.

Anand Goyal, director, cites two basic reasons for the failure of the online trade system.

Firstly, a majority of the members were not well-versed with the practice of online trade, resulting in backwardness in the hedging risk and secondly, they favoured a wider number of commodities while shifting from open outcry to online.

Hence, they either switched over to the national commodity exchanges such as MCX and NCDEX or stopped trading after incurring huge losses, said Goyal.

"We have lost members over the years as national commodity exchanges offer access to many agri and non-agri commodities and easier fund diversion compared with platforms like us," said Goyal.

As it offers trade in three agri commodities i.e. guar, mustard seed and gram (chana), the BCE is not willing to launch new commodities on its platform as 32 active members out of its overall base of 39 are satisfied with the narrowed reach of the exchange.

Goyal, however, is less worried about the exchange members' trading on other exchanges. "Our exchange is gearing up to conduct awareness programmes to attract more traders," Goyal said and added that although BCE was a regional exchange, national participation was possible.