National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), India's biggest spot commodity bourse, plans to start selling one-gram platinum coins in the next 10-15 days, saying the move will add 1 billion rupees ($20 million) to its daily revenue. "Platinum launch is in the pipeline because there is very good demand for platinum from investors," said Anjani Sinha, CEO of NSEL.
Currently, NSEL has a daily turnover of 11-12 billion rupees, and the sale of platinum coins will add about 10 percent to revenue, Sinha told Reuters.
India, which is the largest consumer of gold and silver, imports 10-15 tonnes of platinum annually for use mostly in the auto industry. The metal is used in the production of catalytic converters by automakers.
"Earlier platinum was quoted higher than gold, now it is lower than gold...," Sinha said, adding investors felt that the scope for platinum prices to rise was more than that for gold.
Platinum has been trading at a discount to gold prices for the past five months, on concern over tepid demand from the European auto industry due to the region's debt crisis.
Gold in the global market was trading at $1,745 an ounce, lower than platinum's price of $1,614.50 an ounce on Wednesday.
NSEL, which started operations in October 2008, has spot contracts in 36 commodities, and also offers procurement and selling services for state-run agencies like Minerals and Metals Trading Corp, State Trading Corp, PEC, and Food Corporation of India.
The spot exchange is run by National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation of India and Financial Technologies, controller of the Multi Commodity Exchange, the country's biggest commodity exchange by turnover.
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