Home ›› 03 Nov 2021 ›› Editorial
This newspaper reported on 30th October 2021 that The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission gave primary approval to the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) for establishing the first ever Commodity Exchange in Bangladesh.
Farmers are weaker stakeholder in the market. The need for an effective price risk management mechanism for the protection of commodity sector particularly agriculture from price volatility is certainly of great importance.
The exchange system of trade in commodities is very ancient. As early as in the fourth century, B.C., the city-state of Athens supervised its markets to ensure food supplies and to prevent manipulation of prices. Trading in organised markets existed in China as early as 1200 B.C., and earlier markets in South Asia, Arabia, and Egypt had some of the characteristics of exchange trading. In the modern era, a commodity exchange is an association or a company or any other body corporate organizing futures trading in commodities for which license use to grant by regulating authority.
During 1990s, the economic liberalisation in many countries led to increasing withdrawal of the government’s intervention from the agricultural commodity sector, which made the agricultural prices dependent on the domestic and international market forces (UNCTAD, 1997).
Organised commodity futures exchanges have existed since the last century. Organised options trade was introduced on a large scale in the early 1980s although some organised options trading took place in the 1920s and 1930s in Western markets.
The major commodity futures exchanges are those of the United States of America (the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), and the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange” (CSCE)), the United Kingdom (the London Metal Exchange (LME), the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Liffe)), France (the “Marché à Terme International de France” (MATIF)) and the exchanges in Japan.
The world's most important commodity exchanges are located in developed countries, and they bring important invisible foreign-exchange earnings to these countries. These markets, especially those in the United States and the United Kingdom, provide the international benchmark prices for the commodities for which they offer contracts.
A number of developing countries have their own commodity futures exchanges. The Singapore Commodity Exchange (SICOM - formerly the Rubber Association of Singapore Commodity Exchange) trades various rubber futures as well as Robusta coffee. For non-fuel commodities, the Kuala Lumpur Commodity Exchange (KLCE) has the greatest international significance. Launched in 1980, it was the first futures exchange in Malaysia, offering contracts in crude palm oil.
The other Latin American important exchange is Brazil's “Bolsa de Mercadorias & Futuros” (BM&F), where US$-denominated coffee, soybean, live cattle, feeder cattle, cotton, crystal sugar, corn and gold contracts are traded. Founded in 1854, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange in Argentina is one of the oldest in the world; grain futures trade started in 1907. It trades wheat, maize, sunflowers and soyabeans contracts denominated in US dollars. Several countries with economies in transition from centrally control to market economies, such as Hungary or Slovenia, also have domestic oriented commodity futures exchanges, while many other countries are considering the establishment of their own commodity exchanges.
The traditional definition of commodity exchange market is that it is an organized market for the purchase and sale of enforceable contracts to deliver commodities such as wheat, rice, gold, or cotton or a financial instrument transacted in Stock Exchange.
These commodities are traded in regulated commodity exchange under many kinds of market instrument at cash market, future market and future contract. Commodity futures and derivatives have a crucial role to play in the price risk management process, especially in agriculture. The futures market shift the focus of the present system of ‘Production-Oriented Extension’ to ‘Market- Oriented Extension’.
A Commodity Futures market based on inputs regarding specific market information, the demand and supply equilibrium, weather forecasts, expert views and comments, inflation rates, Government policies, market dynamics, hopes and fears, buyers and sellers conduct trading at futures exchanges. This transforms in to continuous price discovery mechanism.
As a result, the need for an effective price risk management mechanism for the protection of commodity sector from price volatility has been realized earnestly. Changing economic environment, increasing commodity uses through value addition at different stages, increasing number of market participants, changing demand and supply position of agricultural
commodities and growing international competitions require wider roles for futures markets in the agricultural economy. Therefore, many countries have been establishing and promoting commodity futures market.
A commodity exchange is a financial market where different groups of participants trade
commodity-linked contracts, with the underlying objective of transferring exposure to commodity price risks. Commodity exchanges all have a clearing house system: an associated clearing house automatically becomes a counterpart to all transactions on the exchange, and thus guarantees that there is no counterpart risk for those entering into transactions through the exchange. Clearing houses secure market safety by two means: by margining, and by providing financial guarantees. On the over the counter (OTC) market, clearing houses do not exist, and thus all participants run counterpart risks. The continuous accumulation of counterpart risks in a growing market is one of the reasons why successful OTC contracts are likely to give rise to new exchange-traded contracts.
The tradable products in crops stage at field or stocks in the warehouse are converted to some instruments which indicate the products and quantity etc. The receipt or ownership documents are traded through various financial instruments depending upon terms of payments, transfer of ownership, time frame of delivery and guarantee of price etc. There are commonly names products for trade such as forward, future, option, and swap, and they are often embedded in hybrid or structured securities. Derivatives or instruments known as futures and options are traded on exchanges where centralized trading allows for everyone in the market to make quotes, observe all other participants’ quotes and execute trades in full view of all other participants. The Exchange traded derivatives are usually cleared and settled through a central clearing house. Commodity Futures and Derivatives have been well recognized for the functions of risk management and forward pricing for a long time.
There are some Juice and Potato chips manufacturers in Bangladesh buying mango and potato in advance before harvesting periods at a agreed price. Famers and growers are benefited due to guaranteed advance sell. This is a primary form of unregulated and un-organized commodity exchange. These transactions are not regulated to safeguard interest of different stakeholders and risk coverage for breach of contracts due to unforeseen natural disaster.
Bangladesh has cash market for agricultural commodities. Crops such as paddy, red chili, and vegetables are either collected by Farias or commission agents from the producers and take the products to sell directly in nearby markets. Wholesalers purchase from rural markets through agents and send the produce to the commission agents in big urban wholesale markets, or sell to processors. The Farias or commission agents earned a bad name in the society.
Farias are traders who buy directly from the growers and sell to other traders or to the local markets. They are mostly small-scale seasonal floating traders, and some combine farming with trading. Paikars are small scale wholesalers who collect products from small markets and send them to big markets, or sell to near-by Aratdars (big wholesalers). Beparies are rural assemblers who collect from growers or local markets and export to wholesale-cum retail markets or distant urban wholesale markets.
Bangladesh has un-regulated futures market namely name as Dadon or auction for trading of fruits, vegetable and other agricultural products. The ownership of the cultivated crops transferred to Dadon traders and they can sell the Dadon right to others. One of the organized futures trading products are Tobacco and Sugarcane. The buyers of tobacco are Cigarette industries and sugarcane by local sugar refiners. They fix the prices in advance and also provide technical support to the growers as well. There is no auction but an agreed price between buyers and sellers.
The writer is a legal economist. He can be reached at [email protected]
