Ncdex to relaunch steel futures

National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange will relaunch the Steel Futures contract on Monday.

Initially, three contracts expiring in February to April will be available for trading. Ncdex has re-entered the non-agri space expanding the bouquet of derivative products.

The Steel contract will trade long steel products such as ingots and billets having a trading unit of 10 MT. The basis centre will be Gobindgarh in Punjab while Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh will be the additional delivery centre.

Vijay Kumar, Managing Director, Ncdex said demand for steel is likely to take a quantum leap ahead with government effort to make India a $5-trillion economy in the coming years

The steel contract being launched by Ncdex will provide infrastructure companies a reliable and transparent risk management tool to hedge against volatile prices, he added.

Kapil Dev, Executive Vice President, Ncdex said steel consumption is likely to grow at a much faster pace as over ₹44 lakh crore worth of projects are already being implemented out of ₹111-lakh-crore National Infrastructure Pipeline.

The logistical and supply inefficiencies have made steel and its raw material prices extremely volatile posing challenges to the entire value chain participants, he said.

Indian government have twice raised import duty on most steel items, in addition to imposing anti-dumping and safeguard duties to protect domestic companies.