MUMBAI (Commodity Online): India-based leading commodity bourse, National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) has achieved yet another milestone of having one of the most successful steel contract in the world.

The exchange today maintained that the average daily traded volumes are in the range of 20, 000 MT vis-à-vis the last 4 years corresponding figure of 9,000 MT.

Ramesh Iyer, Vice President at NCDEX said, NCDEX has always striven to improve the participation of the steel sector value chain by constantly taking feedback from the participants and thereby continuously improvising on the contract specifications over the last 5 years.

NCDEX had launched its steel futures contracts on March 5, 2005. Since then it has been able to attract secondary steel sector value chain participants viz the Mild Steel (MS) Ingot/Billet manufacturers, sponge iron producers, re-rolling mills, steel consumers and traders. The active participation by these value chain participants has resulted in the NCDEX steel futures contracts gaining ground over the last five years since its launch, the exchange said in a statement issued on Friday, June 04, 2010.

The open interest of all the steel long contracts is now over 1, 00,000 MT vis-à-vis the open interest at 20,000 MT during Jan 2009. Similarly the physical stocks of MS Ingots and Billets at all the accredited warehouses stand at 65, 500 MT vis-à-vis 10,000 MT a year ago.

NCDEX steel futures prices are now being increasingly referred by the long steel sector value chain participants on a daily basis to determine the overall movement of the steel prices in the forward curve.

NCDEX's steel long futures contracts have also achieved another distinction of being the only genuine Indian price discovery based commodity in the non agricultural commodities portfolio. All the other non agricultural commodities that are traded in the Indian commodity exchanges space other than steel are foreign commodity exchange price base derived.

India