September 10,
The government has decided to cap the number of national commodity exchanges at eight to foster sustained growth of the commodity futures market.
“The Consumer Affairs Ministry in consultation with the sector regulator FMC has decided to allow only eight commodity exchanges to function at the national level,” said a senior official.
At present, four national exchanges — MCX, NCDEX, NMCE and ICEX are operating at national level, while the rest two — Ahmedabad Commodity Exchange (ACE) and the Universal Commodity Exchange (UCE) are yet to be launched.
Recently, Gontermann Peipers (India), promoted by Pramod Mittal of the Ispat group, has placed an application for setting up a National Commodity exchange with FMC which regulates the functioning of 4 national and 19 regional exchanges,
“If UCE and Gontermann’s get permission from FMC, then there would be a total of 7 National commodity exchanges in the country,” the official said, noting that the number of national commodity exchanges is higher as compared to 3 stock exchanges in the securities market.
Meanwhile, an FMC official said: “It was felt that the mushrooming of national commodity exchanges would not be a good sign as quality growth was more necessary than just having a mere number of exchanges.”
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