India Started Currency trading

MUMBAI: India kicked off its first exchange-traded rupee futures on
Friday with heavy trading reported in the first minutes of business and
front-month contracts seeing the highest activity. Dealers said banks
and large companies made the bulk of trading, even though the
contract size is small compared with exchange-traded currency futures
elsewhere.
By 10:14 a.m. (0444 GMT), more than 8,000 contracts were traded on
the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the first of several platforms
planned, with the heaviest trade on the September and October
contracts, NSE data showed. On the spot market, the rupee was
trading at 43.74/75 per dollar, slightly firmer than Thursday close at
43.78/79.
India is trying to develop more sophisticated financial markets and
hedging tools to support its rapidly growing economy and Finance
Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said at the start of trading the
government needed to push on with more instruments.
"After having launched currency futures, we need to revitalise
exchange-traded interest rate derivatives markets, offer
exchange-traded credit derivatives and also need to strengthen the
corporate bond markets," he said. "These three products are high on
the priority list of the government and I ask the government to move
forward on this."
Each contract size is $1,000, smaller than 12.5 million Japanese yen
($115,000) or 100,000 Australian dollars (US$86,000) contract sizes
on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Multi Commodity Exchange
of India and the Bombay Stock Exchange have also received
in-principle approval to offer exchange-trade currency futures.