20/11/2007 (The New Straits Times Online) - Bursa Malaysia, the global benchmark for crude palm oil futures, is taking more initiatives to promote the international trading of the commodity which has become the world’s second most popular edible oil.

Bursa Malaysia chairman Tun Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah said today the Malaysian bourse is exploring alliances with regional exchanges to develop a family of linked palm oil derivatives-based products.

“At Bursa Malaysia, we are cognisant of the fact that to develop global appeal and demand for palm oil-related products, we need to galvanise and mobilise market players,” he said.

In line with this, Bursa Malaysia is enhancing its technology infrastructure to support existing and planned futures contracts.

“This year, we are in the midst of implementing Direct Market Access or DMA to ensure that traders and investors have virtually immediate access to our futures products,” he said at the opening of the 2nd China International Oils and Oilseeds Conference here coorganised by Bursa Malaysia and the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE).

In the pipeline is a U.S. dollar crude palm oil futures contract with attractive and market friendy features that will appeal to more global international investors, he added.

A year ago, Bursa Malaysia launched a new trading system called Bursa Derivatives to handle over 1,000 transactions per second in response to increased global trading.

With rising demand, crude palm oil futures volume at the Malaysian stock exchange had soared to 2.2 million contracts as of Oct 15, exceeding the total for the whole of 2006.

The current daily average volume is over 11,000 contracts with a high of over 37,000 contracts chalked up on 13 June.

Mohamed Dzaiddin congratulated DCE on its recent launch of refined palm oil contracts.

Malaysia’s Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin delivered the keynote address at the opening of the conference attended by 600 foreign and domestic participants.