The Hindu Business Line : Declining trend continues in pepper futures

The positive response on the demand of the trade to the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) towards quantity restrictions and the outbound tolerance limit might have some positive impact on the market in the coming days, they said.

The world market is quiet as the US market is closed on account of ‘Thanks giving day’.

Prices of all the origins remained by and large steady at previous levels.

Indian parity is at around $,3550-3,600 a tonne (c&f).

The FMC understood to have agreed at a meeting in Chennai on Friday with the stakeholders to relax the quantity restrictions on near-month position for genuine players in the futures trade in pepper and a decision is expected within a week.

Besides, the Regulator said to have also agreed to direct the exchanges to withdraw their circular dated Nov 10, 2007, reducing the outbound tolerance limit for pepper.

December contract on NCDEX fell on Friday by Rs 295 a quintal to close at Rs 12,860 from Rs 13,155.

The fall in other contracts was from Rs 315 to Rs 442 a quintal.

On NMCE, December contract dropped by Rs 338 a quintal to close at Rs 12,753 from Rs 13,091.

The drop in other contracts was from Rs 148 to Rs 380 a quintal.

Turnover drops

The total turnover on NCDEX declined by 121 tonnes to 15,240 tonnes, while that for December dropped by 25 per cent. January turnover moved up by 67 per cent.

On NMCE, total turnover dropped by 353 tonnes to 1,413 tonnes.

Open interest

Total open interest on NCDEX moved up by 153 tonnes to 20,152 tonnes.

December position declined by 40 per cent while January moved up by 44 per cent.

On NMCE, total open interest declined by 61 tonnes to 1,713 tonnes.

Spot prices

Spot prices also continued its downward trend with the prices dropping by Rs 200 a quintal on Friday to close at Rs 12,500 (un-garbled) and Rs 13,100 (MG 1).