National Spot Exchange (NSEL), the pan-India electronic spot market for commodities, has launched e-Zinc contracts under its e-Series products on Thursday. It will include more metals and agriculture products such as castor seed, black pepper, mustard and potato in its list for the spot trading shortly. NSEL’s e-Series products, which are commodity investment products in demat form, were introduced in 2010 to meet the growing demand of retails investors to invest part of their savings in commodities. The launch of e-Zinc will now enable retail investors to put their small savings into Zinc, even in denominations as small as 1 kg.
E-Series products are offered to retail investors at the same price across the country with the option of physical delivery, which have resulted in e-Gold, e-Silver and e-Copper becoming benchmark (in pricing) for the physical commodity. At present, NSEL witnesses a turnover of around Rs 500 crore per day in its e-Series segment. NSEL expects this turnover to double to around Rs 1000 crore per day by the end of 2011, given that all its proposed e–Series contracts would become operational by that time.
Anjani Sinha, managing director and CEO, NSEL, said, "NSEL’s e-Series products are creating a niche market for investment products in the commodities sector. On account of their suitability in catering to investors’ appetite, they have been extremely successful. Now with the launch of e-Zinc, retail investors and HNIs can add another base metal to their investment portfolio. Given the huge success of the existing e–Series products, we plan to continuously add more commodities under the e-Series umbrella this year." NSEL is also in talks with regional stock exchanges like Pune, Ahmedabad and Baroda.
He added, "Since its launch on NSEL in November this year, e-copper has given a return of nearly 17.5 per cent and the total turnover was Rs 1,300.24 crore and 26.55 million lots (one lot is one kg). e-gold and e-silver, the first two commodities brought into the fold, have given returns of 22 per cent and 62 per cent respectively since their launch early this year."
Also, NSEL has launched a membership drive till January 31, 2011, during which NSEL is offering an admission fee of Rs 7.50 lakh for new members.
NSEL has decided to revise its membership fee to Rs 10 lakh for TCM (trading-cum-clearing) category after the membership drive ends on January 31, 2011.
