Press Trust of India
New Delhi, September 2: The government Wednesday notified the merger of commodities market regulator Forward Markets Commission (FMC) with Sebi with effect from September 28. “Forward Contracts Regulation Act (FCRA) 1952 gets repealed and Regulation of Commodity Derivatives Market will shift to Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) under Securities Contracts Regulation Act (SCRA) 1956 with effect from 28th September, 2015,” the Finance Ministry said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech, had announced the merger of FMC with the capital market regulator Sebi to strengthen the regulation of commodity futures market. A unified regulator for commodities and capital markets will help streamline monitoring of commodity futures trading and curb wild speculations. In the wake of a Rs 5,500 crore payment crisis at the National Spot Exchange Ltd, FMC was brought under Finance Ministry in 2013.
Enabling legislation, amending the Securities Contracts Regulation Act (SCRA) 1956 and FCRA 1952 were proposed in the Finance Act, 2015. In the beginning, FMC was only regulating regional commodity exchanges and its role was expanded after the emergence of national electronic trading platform. Currently, there are three national and six regional bourses for commodity futures in the country. The Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) had recommended that Sebi, IRDA, PFRDA and FMC should be merged into a single entity into a unified financial agency.