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IPSTA team to visit major pepper nations

G.K. Nair

KOCHI, Sept. 6

THE Indian Pepper and Spice Trade Association (IPSTA), promoter of the International Commodity Exchange(ICE) for futures trading in Pepper, is sending a delegation to major pepper producing and exporting countries in South-East Asia to sell the concept o f the exchange and dollar-denominated trading.

Though the exporters and traders in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Singapore had shown interest in becoming members of ICE, they had got no idea about the concept of the exchange, its functioning and benefits etc, Mr Kishor Shamji, President , IPSTA, told Business Line on Thursday.

The IPSTA Task Force Committee had recently recommended sending delegations to these countries. As it would involve an expenditure of Rs 3 lakh, the association's annual general body meeting which was scheduled to be held on September 15 had to approve the proposal, he said.

He said the International Pepper Community based at Jakarta had offered its assistance by creating a platform for interaction with the exporters in the pepper producing countries in this region. However, participation of Brazil was unlikely for the time being, he said.

Many IPSTA members had now shown interest to become members of the international division to do trading in dollars and some of them had already opened dollar accounts in the designated banks. However, online trading would take some time more as the softw are providers had yet to be finalised, he said.