NMCE to begin futures in wheat, rice by Dec

The National Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (NMCE), the country's first demutualised electronic commodity exchange, marked its first year of successful operations today by obtaining ISO 9001:2000 certification from the British Standard Institute (BSI).

The exchange is planning to roll out futures trading in wheat and rice in December. The comex till date has registered a cumulative turnover close to Rs 40,000 crore.

Kailash Gupta, managing director, NMCE, said "We have good reason to celebrate our first anniversary, Last week we received the certification from British Standard Institute (BSI), an independent internationally recognised agency. NMCE has become the first and only commodity exchange in the country with ISO certification."

Starting its operations in a record time of just 11 months after it was incorporated as a public limited company, NMCE commenced futures trading in 24 commodities on 26th November, 2002 on a national scale and since then, on its path of growth, increased the number to 49, out of which 41 are agro-related commodities.

NMCE is promoted by commodity-relevant public sector undertakings such as Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED), National Institute of Agricultural Marketing (NIAM), Gujarat Agro-Industries Corporation Ltd. (GAICL), Gujarat State Agricultural Marketing Board (GSAMB), and a leading export-import house - Neptune Overseas Ltd.

NMCE derives great strength from its lead promoter CWC, the largest warehousing company in the world, which on any given day holds goods valued at Rs 4,000 crore.

Access to CWC's own vast network of 493 warehouses and additional availability of state warehouses, where CWC has 50 per cent partnership, is again a major advantage to NMCE which will have a countrywide and vast warehousing infrastructure.

Reviewing the performance of NMCE in the last one year, Gupta said, "Considering that it was for the first time that futures trading was carried out on online, our exchange received a good response from the trading community. On an average, our daily turnover is around Rs 150 crore. We exceeded the annual target of Rs 20,000 crore, within eight months of our operations and our cumulative turnover till date is Rs 39,981.36 crore.

Futures trading in rubber, which took off on March 15, 2003 for the first time in India, saw the highest volume of 4,876 lots valued at Rs 29.61 crore in a single day with a cumulative turnover of Rs 980.66 crore till date.

Similarly, pepper has seen the highest volume of 538 lots valued at Rs 3.49 crore in a single day with a cumulative turnover of Rs 202.2 crore till date.

Gold, which was launched on October 3rd this year, touched a turnover of Rs 18 crore on a single day on November 11. The cumulative turnover in gold futures, since its launch, has reached Rs 92.39 crore.