Exchanges extend trading hours for agri commodities from Dec 31 amid traders' protests

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Commodity exchanges MCX, NCDEX and ICEX will extend trading hours for agri commodities by an hour on either side from December 31, with the new trading window being 9 am to 6 pm.

The derivative market for agri commodities currently stays open between 10 am and 5 pm.

The decision comes nearly a month after SEBI allowed exchanges to extend timings, even as it sparked protests from physical traders, who say the move will burden them with costs not commensurate to an increase in revenues.

National Commodity and Derivative Exchange (NCDEX) Managing Director, Vijay Kumar told Moneycontrol, "We are increasing the time from 9 am to 6 pm initially from December 31. We will take feedback from the market once we have started.”

Earlier in the day, a delegation of traders met Gajendra Singh, Minister of State, Agriculture, calling upon him not to allow extension of trading hours. NCDEX officials, who were present at the meeting, told traders they will work with them to iron out any problems.

SEBI approved the extension on November 30. Moneycontrol broke the story on November 29.

Traders had recently also called a day’s strike at Unjha in Gujarat and Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Unjha is India’s largest jeera market.

“In the physical market, our auction process completes at 4 pm. Then it takes three hours to execute the settlement. The new timings will force us to work 12 hours. We had shared our feedback with NCDEX when they had sought suggestions from us on the issue. But we think they did not share it with SEBI,” Vijay Joshi, President, Unjha Commodity Association told Moneycontrol.

A source told Moneycontrol that SEBI’s decision to extend timings was taken after the approval of the SEBI-appointed Commodity Derivatives Advisory Committee (CDAC).

“This committee had participation from all stakeholders, including the Commodity Brokers Association (CPAI), exchanges and experts,” the source said.

The CPAI was explicit in its approval of timings till 9 pm, another source said.