The Core Report #833 Why India Still Does Not Set Global Agri Commodity Prices | Govindraj Ethiraj | The Core Report
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Mar 27, 2026 Arun Raste, CEO of NCDEX and veteran of commodity markets, explains how India’s exchanges create price signals for farmers and corporates. He discusses war and supply shocks, mandi opacity versus exchange transparency, hedging gaps, warehouse receipts, seasonality in crops like soybean and turmeric, and what it would take for India to move toward global price leadership.
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State Trading Scales Exchange Size
- Government agencies not trading on exchanges limits exchange scale and price discovery compared with China.
- Raste notes Dalian is ~150x bigger because Chinese state buyers/sellers trade on exchange while Indian equivalents do not.
Regulation Made Commodity Prices More Fundamental
- SEBI rules (margins, position and stock limits) reduced cornering and made commodity price moves depend on fundamentals.
- Raste credits the FMC-to-SEBI shift for introducing limits that prevent sudden extreme moves and cartelization.
Warehouse Receipts Enable Financial Trading
- NCDX issues electronic negotiable warehouse receipts via its NERL repository, letting financial trading without physical movement.
- Growers deposit goods, receive assayed quality receipts that are tradable, improving quality standards in the system.