NSEL Starts Mock Trading in Agri Commodities
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Aug 1, 2008

National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), India' first online spot trading platform, has commenced mock trading on pan India basis in agriculture commodities.

NSEL has received license to commence online trading from the governments of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat. Besides, it has entered into a MoU with the governments of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

As of now, more than 500 entities from across the country have evinced interest in membership of NSEL and 225 of them have already submitted their applications, said a release. The launch of NSEL will strengthen the supply chain and provide an efficient procurement mechanism to the corporates.

Anjani Sinha, MD & CEO NSEL said, "Mock trading is a replica of the systems and procedures used for live trading. Our aim is to ensure that all our members are ready to commence trading on day one and that our systems are robust, effective and efficient. The exchange is planning to launch acrecanut, black pepper, castor seed, coriander, cumin seed, cotton (long and medium), gold, rubber, silver, tur, urad, and a number of other commodities for trading."

NSEL is poised to go live by end of August'08. It envisions improving marketing efficiencies in the existing system by enhancing the supply chain management in the agri business. It is a state-of the-art, organized, and structured electronic market place providing facilities for risk fee and hassle free procurement and disposal of farm produce. It provides on line pan India negotiation platform for the farmers, traders, processors, exporters, importers, arbitrageurs, investors, and the general mass relating to agricultural marketing, the release said.

As of now, agri-commodities will be launched with production areas as delivery centers of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Bihar, and non-agri commodities at different parts of the country as delivery centers, Sinha said in the release. To help build a robust infrastructure and induce wider participation from the agri markets National Spot Exchange recently signed an MOU with Gujarat Agro-Industries Corporation to develop agri business in Gujarat. Gujarat Argo currently has a franchise network of 1200 active centers, which provide agricultural input services. These franchises will be connected to NSEL platform and will work as a conduit between farmers and NSEL.

The Department of Information Technology (DIT), has also decided to establish more than 100,000 ICT-enabled Common Service Centres (CSC) in rural areas in the country on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model wherein NSEL is an active and integral strategic partner. DIT has appointed IL&FS as the "National Level Service Agency" (NLSA) for project development, facilitation & coordination of the CSC Scheme. NSEL will partner with the Service Centers Agencies, (SCAs who will establish & operate the CSCs) and other stakeholders to leverage the CSC network to make use of infrastructure and internet enabled network of accredited CSCs to promote, market and disseminate its services to more than 500,000 villages across the country.

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