Mumbai: With an intent to create awareness, and educate a large number of base metal stakeholders of the commodity ecosystem on the utility and importance of the commodity futures market, Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX) and Bombay Pipes and Fitting Merchant Association, jointly organised a commodity awareness programme in Mumbai on Monday, October 12, 2015.

The purpose of the platform was to create an understanding of the commodity futures market among the participants, which would enable them to manage their price risks better. The experts from MCX explained about the technicalities of working of the commodity markets with respect to the products, price discovery, transparency and risk management mechanism in trading and settlement of transactions. Additionally, they provided in-depth knowledge on the fundamentals of base metals, importance of hedging and how they can benefit from trading on a commodity futures platform.

In sync with the needs of the base metal value chain participants, MCX offers futures trading in copper, aluminium, zinc, nickel and lead, which are benchmarked to international prices, thereby enabling the market participants to manage their price risks both effectively and efficiently. Further, as these contracts are traded in Indian rupee, any currency risk associated with the trade circuit obviously gets mitigated.

Mr. Samir S. Shah, President, Bombay Pipes and Fitting Merchant Association said “The volatility in metal price has been hitting our business margins significantly. I am sure that today’s session by MCX on price risk management in base metals has helped our members understand the importance of using MCX base metals futures contracts to manage the metal price risk better.”

MCX has been proactively trying to reach out to myriad stakeholders in order to increase participation on India’s commodity futures market by organising awareness programmes all over India in collaboration with educational institutions; trade and local associations.