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The Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, flanked by the MCX Chairman, Mr Venkat Chary (right), and the MD, Mr Jignesh Shah (left), at the inauguration of the first Commodity Suchna Kendra of MCX at APMC in Vashi (Navi Mumbai) on Tuesday. Also seen is the Maharashtra Finance Minister, Mr Jayant Patil. — Shashi Ashiwal

Mumbai , June 14

THE Government is likely to introduce a Warehousing Development and Regulation Bill in the next Parliament session by making warehouse receipts negotiable for the benefit of farmers and commodity traders, said the Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, while inaugurating the `Commodity Suchna Kendra' here on Tuesday.

The centre, launched by the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX) and National Spot Exchange for Agriculture Produce (NSEAP), is an electronic price and information dissemination system for commodity market.

It would act as a knowledge centre for commodities from spot and future market price and information on fundamentals at the Navi Mumbai APMC market.

Mr Pawar also said, "In the current scenario, the price discovery in the spot market is distorted and dominated by local fundamentals.

The farmers are penalised and exploited due to the lack of a nationwide spot price discovery and dissemination mechanism."

The Government has initiated steps for farmers to get better price realisation for their produce and also provide all possible price information to them. Setting up of such information centre is the first step towards this direction, he said. He added that States would need to evolve changes in the Draft Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act.

"Sixteen States have so far approved the necessary changes in the APMC Act," he said.

Mr Jignesh Shah, Managing Director of MCX, said that the Commodity Suchna Kendra would display spot, future and commodity prices and also composite commodity future index MCX-COMDEX, which is computed on a real-time basis.

"NSEAP has pioneered this initiative to link the APMC market electronically, in phases, to create a common India market envisaged by the Union Government," Mr Shah said.

"This electronic platform would disseminate real time spot and future prices to the traders in these markets which would be followed with the second phase in which complete economic system integration would be taken up," he said.

NSEAP is also planning to set such centres at all APMC markets, which would link all the agriculture physical market players.

It would also help in linking the support infrastructure from a single point access that would enable the users to get all the assistance such as buying, selling, storing, transporting and payment of commodities.

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