TEHRAN- In a bid for more risk management in the country’s capital market, Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) officially launched futures contract during a ceremony held last December at the place of Central Securities Depository of Iran (CSDI), which is the sole registrar, central custodian and clearing house for the Iranian stock market.

And on Sunday, “futures” was launched for the pistachio deals at Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME).

Futures contracts (more colloquially, futures) are financial contracts obligating the buyer to purchase an asset or the seller to sell an asset at a predetermined future date and price.

The Sunday ceremony to launch this financial instrument was held at the place of IME attended by Ali-Akbar Mehrfard, the deputy agriculture minister, Shapour Mohammadi, the head of Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO), Hamed Soltani-Nejad, the head of IME, and Mohammadreza Pour-Ebrahimi, a member of parliament’s economic committee.

Addressing the ceremony, Soltani-Nejad said, “There is no futures contract for pistachio deals in any mercantile exchange in the world and it is the first time that such contract is launched in a mercantile exchange.”

“Pistachio and saffron are two major agricultural products of our country and we have advantage in this due in the world; therefore, benefitting from new financial instruments for trades of these products can make us a source for setting their price in the global markets”, the official noted.

He further announced that futures contracts worth 125 trillion rials () have been made for agricultural products at IME since the beginning of current Iranian calendar year (March 21), and said that benefitting from new financial instruments for trading agricultural products based on the models used at the global markets in a bid to discover the fair price, provide financial sources for the farmers, lay the proper grounds for production, and manage the risks which are created by the price fluctuations is on the agenda of IME’s plans and launching futures is a big step to this end.

MA/MA