Role of Commodity Futures on Indian Agricultural Commodity Market

Against the well-established fact that the usefulness and suitability of futures trading in developing the underlying agricultural commodity market, especially in an agriculture-based country like India are been questioned by various bodies. Through this work, it has been analyzing the role of futures trading on agricultural commodities. The effect of futures trading may be of two kinds, that is by way of hedging the price risk and the other way is through price discovery. The data collected for the analysis are the daily price history of spot and futures of five major agricultural commodities (Castor Seed, Chana, Chilli, Jeera, and Wheat) for a period of 7 years started from 2007 to 2014. Here it is revalidated the relationship between price movements of agricultural commodity futures and underlying spot prices by applying econometric analysis tools like Unit Root Test, and Engel-Granger test of Cointegration. The empirical findings proved that an existence of interrelationship between futures price movement and respective underlying spot prices in Indian agricultural commodity market.