Just after Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced the introduction of Commodity Transaction Tax (CTT) and service tax for commodity exchanges, the commodity players are up in arms.
They say this is unjust and unfair. It will kill the fledgling futures market.
Remember how he justified the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) and Minimum Alternative Tax some years back. Perhaps his Harvard training helps in all these efforts (Subramaniam Swamy will be able to tell better).
You just can't blame the FM. After all, his job is to raise resources and as pragmatic citizens it is our duty to use expert advice to avoid them.
Can the markets beat the FM? That would require creative thinking on the lines of 'what could be' as opposed to 'what is'. For example, futures bourse TOCOM can think of opening up their market to Indian commodity players. If indeed their transaction tax is lower, they will be able to attract more business.
TOCOM could also become colourful if our chana, nutmeg, chillies and khandsari are added to its tradable futures. Why should TOCOM ignore the Indian market of 30 lakh crore, the business that is supposedly happening through our commodity markets?
So what will happen to our MCX, NCDEX and NMCE? How can they wriggle out of this crisis? Actually, they also need not close down. They can go to greener pastures.
Perhaps they can open their subsidiaries in Tokyo, Malaysia, China, Vietnam or elsewhere provided they are allowed to.
Just as Indian, American and European companies started to move towards safer industrial destinations such as China when conditions were not friendly back home; could there be an exodus of Indian commodity business to overseas markets?
Again why should such countries forego a wonderful opportunity of tapping into Indian commodity market?
As in stock markets, the ratio of retail players to institutional players in commodity markets is also low. To tap this segment dedicated mutual funds capable of overseas investment and transactions would crop up.
Right now even if arguments against CTT are genuine and convincing they still can't do much if in the worst case Chidambaram refuses to reverse his decision. The argument that commodity market growth has been stagnant last year shows that CTT alone is not the culprit.
As they say every crisis creates an opportunity. It is for the global players in commodity markets to examine whether they can creatively respond to the crisis created by CTT. In the globalised era it is just not capital and goods that need to move freely across boundaries, markets could.
For an investor it matters little whether he puts his money in MCX or TOCOM or Shanghai Futures so long as transaction costs are lower and ensures good returns. So also exchanges need not worry whether they make money in their origins or overseas.
