Lahore Stock Exchange (LSE) has decided to establish Spot Commodity Trading Platform through a separate subsidiary by using mobile financial transaction technology, reflecting a major initiative for the farmer's community.
This was stated by Aftab Ahmad Chaudhry, Managing Director (MD)/CEO Lahore Stock Exchange at a reception hosted by him in honour of Andrew Gastaldello, President of Utiba Mobile Financial Services Group of Singapore here on Sunday.
Sharing major features of the new initiative, MD LSE said that in order to benefit farmers from the best price discovery and enable banks to provide post harvest financing to them, LSE will soon establish the first ever spot commodity trading platform through a separate subsidiary which will start its operations soon.
Aftab stated that spot commodity market was quite opaque where the farmers act as price takers, as the price discovery process was monopolized by the middlemen. These middlemen also act as the informal money lenders, who are nothing but the loan sharks for our hard working farmers.
He said that LSE will provide a unique spot commodity trading platform through the combination of the exchange technology/systems with the mobile payment system. He said that LSE was in advanced talks with many potential partners to establish the said spot exchange within this calendar year. He said the application for the formation of a company has been pending with the SECP for quite some time and if the same is not approved, then LSE will form the exchange under the co-operative societies regulations.
Giving details of the new technology at the reception, Andrew said that mobile technology had the potential of bringing the next big change in the business of the Exchange platforms just as the Big Band had brought a revolution in the trading environment of London Stock Exchange. "Utiba is uniquely positioned to help the domestic exchange industry to innovate further and aim for a far greater access to a very large mobile subscriber base in Pakistan, he added.
Andrew stated that Ubita had spent more than a decade developing the leading mobile financial services solutions in the market, in pursuit of its vision of enabling everyone to make mobile payments. He said that Ubita was in use in more than 30 countries and its mobility platform supports 500 million subscribers and processes over 12 billion transactions per year. He said that in many countries, Ubita's platform is also being used to send and receive salaries besides other basic or common banking services such as payment of utility bills and sales transactions. He said that Ubita has also signed a Commercial co-operation agreement with MasterCard to deliver and commercialise MasterCard's Mobile Money Services. He said that Ubita also a long standing relationship with Western Union, and its global client base is a reflection of how Ubita can act as a serious partner for expanding the business of the Exchange industry in Pakistan.
Andrew is visiting Pakistan these days where his company is already providing mobile financial technology to Mobilink, and is in advance discussion with many other service providers. During his visit, Andrew is likely to call on the Finance Minister as well as some other high government officials.