The turnover of commodity bourses has declined 4.5 per cent to Rs 94.72 lakh crore till October 15 this fiscal due to sluggish investor participation in gold and silver futures.

The exchanges had clocked a turnover of Rs 99.18 lakh crore in the year-ago period.

Except for bullion, there was a substantial increase in the turnover of energy, metals and agricultural commodities during the period under the review, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) said on its Web site.

Business from energy items like crude oil rose 42 per cent to Rs 20.79 lakh crore during the April-October 15 period of the 2012-13 fiscal against Rs 14.61 lakh crore in the same period corresponding year.

While turnover from metals like copper increased 23 per cent to Rs 17.29 lakh crore from Rs 14.10 lakh crore, business from farm items rose 28 per cent to Rs 12.88 lakh crore from Rs 10.09 lakh crore, according to the FMC data.

However, turnover from bullion fell 28 per cent to Rs 43.75 lakh crore from Rs 60.36 lakh crore.

On falling business volumes, FMC Chairman Ramesh Abhishek had recently said that the regulator was “more concerned about quality of turnover not on quantity’’.

At present, the country has five national and 16 regional level commodity exchanges in the country. Recently, the FMC gave approval to the Universal Commodity Exchange to operate as a national bourse.

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