ANAND (Commodity Online): Left with no option of hedging and risk management, a majority of traders who attended a seminar recently, asked the government to reconsider its decision to stick to ban on Pulses Futures.

Considering the advancement of monsoon in the pulses producing states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and parts of Madhya Pradesh farmers and traders of pulses in Gujarat have made up their minds to raise their voice for resumption of futures trading in pulses like Tur, peas and urad.

In a seminar on pulse industry and the scope for growth under the series of “Agri Wisdom Seminar, Pulse Processors and Traders” organized by the ICICI Bank Agri Business Banking at Anand on Saturday, nearly 150 traders and importers from across Gujarat collectively expressed their willingness to allow futures trading in pulses.

“We are facing tremendous pressure on cost front as prices of raw material are still hovering at an upper-end and there does not seem to be any instrument through which we can hedge our price risk. We believe this is the high time that the government allowed futures trade in pulses,” said Mitesh Patel, Managing Director, Laxmi Protein Products Pvt Ltd – a dal processor in Vasad, a town nearby Vadodara.

Presently, only Chana is traded on the exchanges, while other pulses including pigeon peas and black matpe, besides tur and urad have been banned since 2007 owing to low production in the country and skyrocketing prices of the commodity. Many traders and farmers from different parts of Gujarat have collectively demanded for resumption of pulses futures trading. A resolution for the same will also be given to the government.

The seminar addressed some of the key issues with respect to pulse industry in Gujarat covering production, imports, processing, marketing and finance.

In his opening address to the gathering, Maganbhai Mehta, President, Gujarat Pulses Manufacturers’ Association raised issues of rising imports of pulses in the country. “Most of the people don’t understand the key issue why dal prices are rising. As long as there persists a deficit for processors, there would be a price escalation. In Gujarat, there is a severe deficit of raw material for pulse processing, due to which traders have to import the commodity from overseas at a higher cost,” he said adding that there is a need to incentivize farmers to produce more pulses so as to reduce our dependency on imports.

The dependency on futures trading to hedge the price risk is higher in Gujarat villages, as they are not well versed with the other hedging tools like hedging in foreign exchanges etc. Ashok Patel a leading pulse processor in the region said, “We have only four-five private importers in the region. This gives very opportunity for other traders or processors to trade in forex and hedge their cost-related risk. There is very low awareness among processors of such alternative hedging tools other than commodity futures.”

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