Thailand futures market to co-operate with Japan's commodities exchange.

Byline: Woranuj Maneerungsee

Oct. 5--Japan's second largest commodities exchange, the Central Japan Commodity Exchange (C-Com), is eager to learn more about Thailand's fledgling futures market, especially for rice trading.

"Rice futures are the major reason for us to exchange information," Seiji Kawai, C-Com's managing director, said yesterday after signing a co-operation agreement with the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand, the kingdom's first such exchange and Asia's only active rice futures market.

Mr Kawai said C-Com has been studying the possibility of futures trading in broken rice, a raw material for various industries such as food and alcohol.

Japan's own rice futures market was halted over 70 years ago, shortly before the outbreak of World War Two. If C-Com lists rice futures on its market, actual rice trading between Japan and Thailand will increase.

C-Com, which mainly trades energy commodities, ranks second after the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (Tocom) in terms of contracts on hand. In 2003, its trading volume was 31.5 million contracts, compared with the 87.3 million for Tocom. Increased ties with C-Com, the world's seventh largest commodity exchange, could convince more Japanese brokers and investors to trade on the AFET, said Mr Kawai.

AFET president Napaporn Kurupasutchai said C-Com was eager to establish co-operation with AFET, now just four months old.