China considers opening up futures market (12/02/02) -
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Published on: 12/2/2002
Last Visited: 5/11/2004
CFA's Deputy Director Chang Qing said in an interview: "According to our development plan, (we should) focus on doing a good job of building the domestic market before 2005 ... and gradually open up after that, for example (allowing) joint ventures."
Rather than foreign capital, Chang said what the industry needs most at present is a more mature and much bigger domestic market, one that is influential in other Asian markets.
That's a tough task.Only seven types of commodity futures are now being traded on China's three futures exchanges, and the annual combined turnover is a paltry 3 trillion yuan (US$360 billion), as compared to the average daily volume of US$3 trillion at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, notes CIFCO (Shenzhen)'s President Ma Wensheng."The scale is just too small," he said.
That has constrained the arbitrage appetite of foreign futures companies, and the fact that many foreign-invested companies are already hedging Chinese contracts, through illegal channels, further reduces their interest in obtaining immediate market access, Chang said.
"They are not interested," Chang said.Up to 2005, he said, "it's a process of continuously launching new products."
Chang did not elaborate, but the CSRC has said it was preparing to launch more commodity futures contracts, such as cotton and oil.More significantly, the CSRC is studying the feasibility of re-introducing financial futures, including stock index and Treasury bonds.