New Delhi, May 5: An agreement between the Coffee Futures Exchange of India (Cofei) limited and the Bangalore Stock Exchange (BgSE) on utilising the latter's facilities for the country's first domestic coffee futures exchange is likely to be signed in a couple of days. This will pave the way for commencement of coffee futures trade during the third week this month."We and BgSE will be entering into an agreement in a day or two. The stock exchange will have to decide on our requirement, and we have already made up our mind on utilising the bourse's facilities," Cofei chairman Ashwin Shah said.
During talks with the exchange yesterday, officials of Cofei, incorporated to set up the futures exchange, had told the stock exchange officials their requirement and the latter was expected to get back to them by tomorrow, he said.
Once the agreement is signed, decks will be cleared for commencement of trading at the exchange during the third week of this month.
"We plan to commence trading during the thirdweek of this month. It will depend on the convenience of commerce minister Ramakrishna Hegde, who is likely to inaugurate the exchange," he said.
Shah said there would be no problem in commencing trading immediately since requirement for infrastructure was minimum.
"The exchange has excellent infrastructure, and there should be no problem in starting trading immediately," he said. Cofei proposes to hold mock trading at the exchange for a week either from May 15 or May 18.
"Members have made a request for holding mock trading to familiarise themselves with the regulations. "We plan to hold mock trading for at least a week before the start of actual trading," he said.
The coffee futures exchange was initially expected to commence trading in January last but completion of formalities and technicalities have caused a delay.
The delay was mainly caused by formulating the rules and regulations for the exchange. The initial set of rules submitted to the Forward Markets Commission was returned to Cofeiwith suggestions to amend a few rules.
After the amended set of bylaws were submitted to the FMC, the exchange got the go-ahead for commencing trade during February.
Since then, Cofei has speeded up its work to commence trading by enrolling members for the exchange and identifying bgse infrastructure for holding the trading.
The coffee exchange is expected to bring in the much-required transparency in trading of the commodity.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
