Kochi: The National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) plans to launch electronic spot exchanges across the country, says P.H. Ravikumar, managing director and chief executive officer.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of an awareness programme organised by the NCDEX in association with Infarm here on Tuesday, Mr. Ravikumar said the exchange sought permission from seven State Governments to start spot exchanges at a cost of Rs.12 crore to 15 crore.

The idea is to have regional warehouses to store the commodities from the farmers and to ensure the best price based on futures trading. In a bid to spread awareness on the benefits of futures trading in commodities, the NCDEX has been organising seminars on opportunities in commodities futures trading and how commodities trading on exchange platform is beneficial to the farmers. The first such seminar was held here on Tuesday.

Fr. Mathew Vadakkemuriyil of Infarm said farmers still viewed futures trading suspiciously because of alleged scope for manipulation of prices. The authorities were also wary about launching futures trading in some of the commodities here in the interest of the farmers. However, from a marketing point of view, futures trading could benefit farmers once they were made aware of the mechanism. This would also help the farmers to ensure their rights with banks and would have a better understanding about how the farmers could avail themselves of loans at competitive interest rates against warehouse receipts.

He said commodity exchanges should come close to the farmers. Now traders were controlling commodity exchanges. The trading in commodity futures coupled with the proposed launch of spot exchanges would bring down the number of intermediaries and help farmers realise remunerative price for their produce.

They could use both the futures and the spot platform to avoid distress sales, he said.

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