Indian commodity exchange plans currency futures

RBI and SEBI have given green signals for Currency futures in India. Trading in currency future is likely to start by the end of this month or may be early septemeber at NSE, BSE and MCX. As per my guesswork only big names in the brokerage industry (Karvy, India Bulls, India Infoline and few others) are going to apply as the requirements are tough. All these brokers would initiate large scale marketing to attract retail clients. Currency futures are likely to generate tremendous response from retail section as currently RBI directive does not allow retail investors to trade in FOREX.

MUMBAI, Aug 17 (Reuters)- The National Multi-Commodity Exchange of India Ltd , the country’s third-largest commodity exchange, plans to launch exchange-traded currency futures, an NMCE official said on Sunday.

Regulators gave the go-ahead for exchange-traded currency futures earlier this year and the Securities and Exchange Board of India said last week it had received applications from India’s two main stock exchanges and from a unit of the Multi Commodity Exchange of India , the largest commodity exchange, for approval to start currency futures.

NMCE director Sudip Bandyopadhyay said the exchange had applied to the Registrar of Companies to establish a new company to create a currency futures exchange.

“We applied last week and sometime this week we would be applying to the Securities and Exchange Board of India for approval,” Bandyopadhyay said by telephone.

“It could take about six weeks from now for actual trading to start.”

Shareholders in the new company would be NMCE, Reliance Money and some state-run banks, Bandyopadhyay said.

Reliance Money, a unit of financial services company Reliance Capital Ltd, owns 26 percent of NMCE. Bandyopadhyay is also chief executive of Reliance Money.

Read more about currency futures at our sister site: A Guide to Currency Futures Trading