NCDEX scraps sona, chandi contracts

The National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange has decided to discontinue with sona and chandi contracts owing to poor volumes, said Narendra Gupta, chief business officer.

"The contracts were not being appreciated well in the market. Volumes were not good. We, thus, decided to focus on our gold and silver contracts and discontinue with sona and chandi," he added.

The exchange has also upgraded tradable quantities in gold from 10 grams to 100 grams and in silver from 5 kilograms to 30 kg.

The trading unit of sona was 1 kg and that of chandi was 30 kg.

Following this decision, no chandi contract was launched by the exchange today. The chandi contract, launched 1 September was to expire on March 2006. In the similar vein, no sona contract will be launched on 1 Octomber (expiring February 2006).

The bullion complex on NCDEX, which comprise gold, silver, sona, and chandi contracts, will soon have just two components, namely gold and silver.

NCDEX is primarily an agri-commodity exchange and gets 80 per cent of its volumes from those. The exchange has been trying to shift towards metals""precious as well as industrial and energy sector in a bid to expand into other categories.