Pakistan Mercantile Exchange (PMEX) Limited announced the commencement of trading in the Sugar Futures Contract, this week. The trading started in the February contract and PMEX has currently three contracts for the months of March, April and May, respectively. The sugar contract launch marks a big step forward in the domestic commodities portfolio of PMEX. PMEX Sugar Futures are deliverable contracts and the trading unit for the contract is 10 metric tonnes. Primary advantage of the contract is to provide market participants with opportunities to trade and hedge over a transparent platform. Millers, processors and traders get the superior advantage of PMEX settlement guarantee mechanism whereby, participants can eliminate counterparty risk from their trading. On this occasion, Mr Samir Ahmed, MD PMEX said, “Over the next five years, PMEX will focus on developing our domestic agricultural markets. The main objective will be to initially list all the major domestic agricultural products on the Exchange. This will be followed by an extensive marketing plan to create awareness of the immense benefits that an active futures market offers for growers, consumers, traders and processors of agricultural commodities in Pakistan.”
He further added the intention is to follow the best international practices in terms of transparency, fairness and open access so that all players in the value chain can be equally benefited.
In order to achieve the set out objectives, PMEX is planning to open offices near the major agricultural zones of the country for easy access and trust building to take place between the Exchange and the agricultural stakeholders. The initial plan is to open four offices during 2012 in the approved areas. PMEX will continue to follow tight risk management procedures and controls that it has pioneered in Pakistan and that have stood it in good stead, especially in recent times of immense volatility in the international markets.
