Marathwada Vidarbha Turmeric Trade Association has written a letter to the Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Choudhary, demanding a ban on trading in the turmeric futures market on the NCDEX and BSE.
The association alleged that some traders and corporates are making a profit. The prices are being decided according to the convenience in the futures price, it said, and the farmers of Maharashtra are facing a lot of loss.
“Some handful of traders and companies store around 2/3 of total turmeric produced in India in the forward market warehouse and then they determine the rate of 97% of production,” the industry body, one of the largest associations of turmeric traders, said in the letter.
Around 60% of the production comes to the market after March, and the trading for April begins in November of the previous year. However, very few farmers determined the rate at the time, said the letter.
The letter also alleged that the agricultural commodity exchanges have “no farmers” registered for purchasing or selling. However, NCDEX chief business officer Kapil Dev said, “Futures contracts traded on the exchange platform in turmeric have attracted wide and active participation from all sections of the value chain participants.”
He said the contracts traded on the NCDEX facilitate efficient price discovery and provide a transparent market for all the value chain participants to hedge price risk.
The BSE did not respond to queries emailed by ET.
India recorded production of about 467,000 tonnes of turmeric for 2022, up 9.64% year-on-year.
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