An Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand staff shows how the new SMS-Futures Price Alert service for customers will give price details via SMS over all mobile-phone networks.

The first commodity futures market of Thailand - with only six underlying commodity items - will celebrate its third anniversary on May 28.

Its president Napaporn Kurupasutachai announced yesterday that she expected average daily trading volume to rise to 1,000 contracts this year, compared to 567 contracts in 2006 representing Bt171.34 million per day.

However, in the first quarter this year the daily trading volume was recorded at only 325 contracts representing Bt117.5 million. The total trading volume in the period was 20,170 contracts, representing Bt7.29 billion, down 13.8 per cent from the same period last year.

"We had several surprising factors in the first quarter, including some measures from the authorities. We were affected psychologically, but in fact, the supply and demand of our market depends largely on the world market. We have much less correlation with local market sentiment. Thai investors are accustomed to the stock market and think the Afet is the same, but in fact it is different," Napaporn said when asked why first-quarter trading volume was down.

She said political uncertainty had made it hard for all businesses to expand.

However, she believes that despite the ambitious target, Afet will be able to achieve up to 1,000 contracts per day this year as the exchange has joined with brokerage houses to boost volume through all channels. The only measure from the government that would really affect the exchange is intervention in the price of agricultural products.

Asked how Afet assessed its performance over the past three years, Napaporn said the futures exchange had achieved its target of laying a foundation and investor education. From now on, the goal is to boost volume.

"It's hard to predict volume. Unfortunately, we have to celebrate our third anniversary in this period of political uncertainty. If the volume is to rise, it will rise sharply when the time is right," she said.

Chanon Phucharoenyos, director and CEO of JSP Futures, said yesterday that his company planned to boost trading volume over the next six months through more seminars and connecting with customers of private banks.

JSP Futures is the third-largest futures brokerage in terms of market share.

"We need to lift the profile of our products as well as our market. This is the main duty of brokerage houses. We can't depend largely just on Afet to help boost the market," he said.

Afet yesterday introduced a new service - the SMS Futures Price Alert - through which customers can get prices from the exchange via SMS from all mobile-phone network providers. The service includes a price alert that warns customers when desired prices are matched with bid and offer prices.

Jiwamol Kanoksilp

The Nation