Trading Associations Demand Ban on Turmeric Futures

The Marathwada Vidarbha Turmeric Trade Association has requested a ban on trading in turmeric futures on the NCDEX (National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange) and BSE in a letter to Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Choudhary.

The association claimed that some business owners and traders are profitable. The farmers of Maharashtra are suffering significant losses as a result of the prices being set based on the futures price, it claimed.

One of the largest associations of turmeric traders, the industry body, stated in the letter, "Some handful of traders and companies store around 2/3 of the total turmeric produced in India in the forward market warehouse and then they determine 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 sections of the value chain participants have attracted wide and active participation in the futures contracts traded on the exchange platform in turmeric."

According to him, the contracts traded on the NCDEX enable effective price discovery and offer a transparent market for all participants in the value chain to manage price risk. In 2022, India produced about 467,000 tonnes of turmeric, an increase of 9.64% from the previous year.