Impact of Futures Trading on Agricultural Commodity Market in India

On agricultural commodity futures, there is always been a doubt, expressed by different bodies and experts on the usefulness and suitability of futures contract in developing in the underlying agricultural commodity market, especially in an agricultural based economy like India. Here an attempt is made to revalidate the impact of futures trading on the agricultural commodity market. The daily price information in spot and futures market for a period of seven years ranging from 2007 to 2014 for five major agricultural commodities are estimated using VAR (Vector Auto Regression) and GARCH (1,1) to test the dynamic interrelationship among the variables. The empirical findings significantly show that comparative advantage of the futures market in disseminating information, leading to a significant price discovery and risk management, that can help to successfully develop the underlying commodity market in India.