Commodity market getting back on its feet, turnover jumps 9%

With Sebi in charge of the commodity market, investors are getting their confidence back as the turnover of commodity exchanges grew 9 percent to Rs 67 lakh crore in 2015-16.

This is being seen as one of the best years for the segment in recent times.

Commodity futures turnover on the two major bourses - NCDEX and MCX - stood at nearly Rs 60.9 lakh crore in 2014-15, latest data showed.

In volume terms, the number of such contracts traded rose 56.5 percent to 27.5 crore in 2015-16, from about 17.6 crore in the year-ago period.

According to experts, the growth in commodity trading is attributed to pick-up in investor confidence, with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) entrusted with the job of commodity market.

Things are only going to get better as Sebi is likely to bring in more participants such as foreign portfolio investors and banks and introduce new products like commodity 'options', they said.

Individually, MCX saw a trading value of Rs 56.3 lakh crore in 2015-16 as against Rs 51.8 lakh crore in 2014-15.

There was trading in 23.4 crore contracts for the period under review, up nearly 58 per cent.

NCDEX reported a 13 percent jump in turnover at Rs 10.2 lakh crore while volumes rose 50 percent to 4.1 crore during the last fiscal.

"Fiscal 2014-15 was bad due to the NSEL scam. However, the crisis is being slowly sorted out and investor confidence is being restored," Commtrendz Research Director Gnanasekar Thiagarajan told PTI.

"Over and above that, markets witnessed good participation in certain precious metals, pulses as well as certain other agriculture products." Angel Broking Associate Director (commodities and currencies) Naveen Mathur added: "This was definitely a good year, with volatility in commodities helping growth... gold prices were high, there was volatility in agriculture products." He was hopeful of better growth prospects following various initiatives by the regulator.

Sebi started regulating commodities markets in September last year following the merger of erstwhile watchdog Forward Markets Commission (FMC) with it.

The commodities market has been known to be more prone to speculative activity than the stock market. The high-profile NSEL scam is a case in point.

The subsequent government intervention in this case led to FMC's merger with Sebi.