AHMEDABAD: The International Financial Services Centre Authority (IFSCA), on Wednesday announced it has established an expert committee to position the country’s first IFSC at Gift City in Gandhinagar, as a ‘Global Trading Hub’. The 21-member committee will be chaired by Former Union Commerce Secretary, Rajeev Kher.
Representatives of IFSCA, DGFT, IIBX, ICICI Bank, ONGC, IOCL, Reliance Industries Limited, StoneX, NMDC, JP Morgan Chase, Tata Steel and Arvind Limited, among others are among the 21 members of the committee.
The committee will explore the potential advantages that could be derived to GIFT-IFSC ecosystem, study global policies, programmes and policies of leading jurisdictions and propose steps to promote GIFT IFSC as a Global Commodity Trading Hub by studying how key global commodity trading centres operate, and specially identify areas with strong synergies for the GIFT IFSC financial services industry.
Thanks to the synergies between Financial services and commodity training, centres like Switzerland, Singapore, London, Chicago, Dubai, Shanghai and Rotterdam have emerged as strong International Financial Centres.
The committee will also identify key groups of commodities such as metals – precious / base / rare earth; energy / hydrocarbons; agricultural commodities, among others that should be given higher priority for developing IFSC ecosystem
“Although India is one of the largest consumption markets and largest importers for many commodities, the majority of the commodity traders are executing trades from other financial centres rather than from India. Indian enterprises have established bases in the afore-mentioned trading hubs for a variety of reasons, including favourable tax and regulatory considerations, access to global markets, robust financial infrastructure and an internationally aligned legal ecosystem,” said IFSCA.
“Enabling commodity trading in IFSC will facilitate business integration of IFSC financial ecosystem with global trade flows, capitalize on integration opportunities with major commodity hubs and attract global investment flows into IFSC, thereby helping IFSC grow competitively,” the IFSCA statement further added.
The committee will also develop legal, regulatory and policy frameworks, as well as incentive structures, necessary to position GIFT IFSC as a Global Commodity Trading Hub.
