The NCDEX turmeric futures market should not be traded in, according to a letter sent by the Marathwada Vidarbha Turmeric Trade Association to Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Choudhary. The group said that certain traders and businesses are profitable. It said that the farmers of Maharashtra are suffering significant losses because the prices are set in accordance with the convenience of the futures market.
One of the main associations of turmeric merchants, the industry body, stated in the letter that “A small number of traders and corporations keep almost 2/3 of the total turmeric produced in India in the forward market warehouse and then they control the rate of 97% of production.” The market receives about 60% of the production after March, and trading for April starts in November of the previous year. However, the letter stated that only a small minority of farmers currently choose the rate.
The letter claimed that “No farmers” were registered to buy or sell on the agricultural commodity exchanges. However, according to NCDEX Chief Business Officer Kapil Dev, “All parts of the value chain participants have attracted wide and active involvement in the futures contracts traded on the exchange platform in turmeric.”
Kapil Dev said, the contracts traded on the NCDEX enable effective price discovery and offer a transparent market for all actors in the value chain to manage price risk. In 2022, India produced over 467,000 tonnes of turmeric, an increase of 9.64% from the previous year.
