Why in news?
Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs launched INR-USD Futures and Options contracts on the two International Exchanges, viz BSE’s India INX and NSE’s NSE-IFSC, at GIFT International Financial Services Centre at Gandhinagar.
Background:
What are futures?
- Futures are contracts made between two parties wherein they agree to buy or sell a particular asset at a fixed price at a particular time in the future. This helps in reducing the risk and losses involved.
- Let’s say you are a soybean farmer, there is good rainfall and hence the supply of soybean is high and so the prices come down. You will be at loss as a farmer.
- Think of the soybean buyer now. Due to unexpected drought, the price of soybean goes up.
- So, as a buyer, he has to shell out more and hence he faces loss.
- To avoid these losses, it is essential to enter into futures contract. This will protect you irrespective of the market fluctuations.
- For example, the price of soybean hits Rs. 350 after 3 months, but if you have already made a futures contract at Rs. 400, you will gain a profit of Rs. 50 even though the market price is Rs. 350.
- By this way, you can predict the future demand, price and also reduce the losses. You can actually trade using lesser margins in case of futures contract
What are options?
Option contract gives buyer the right, but he is under no obligation to buy or sell the asset. Whereas the seller of the options contract is under obligation to buy or sell the asset based on the option contract buyer’s decision. For example, you have a bike and purchased insurance for the bike at Rs. 10000. If your bike is damaged, you will get your insurance claim as per the agreement. But if no such damage happens, the premium you paid becomes the income for the insurance company. In case of option buyer, the return potential is unlimited whereas risk or loss is limited to premium only. In case of option seller, return is limited to the premium whereas the risk involved is unlimited. There are 2 types of options namely call option and put option
1. Call option
In this case, the owner has the right but has no obligation to buy the asset. For example, you made a call option contract with say Kumar for buying TCS share at Rs. 500. The price of TCS in the market is Rs. 600. So you will definitely prefer to buy share from Kumar at Rs. 500 rather than paying Rs. 100 more. Your profit is Rs. 100 in this case. If the price of the share is Rs.400 in the market, you would prefer to buy it from the market rather than buying it from Kumar. So, what profit does Kumar get here? When you enter into a contract, you are required to pay a premium. So even if you don’t buy the shares from Kumar, he is benefitted due to the premium you have paid earlier.
2. Put option:
Put option buyer has the right to sell but has no obligation to sell the contract and put option seller has the obligation to buy. In this case too, the buyer of the contract pays premium. Profit is unlimited in case of contract buyer whereas it is limited in case of contract seller
What is GIFT-IFSC?
- An IFSC enables bringing back to India the financial services and transactions that are currently carried out in offshore financial centers by Indian corporate entities and overseas branches / subsidiaries of financial institutions (FIs) by offering business and regulatory environment that is comparable to other leading international financial centers in the world like London and Singapore.
- It would provide Indian corporates easier access to global financial markets. IFSC would also compliment and promote further development of financial markets in India.
- The first IFSC in India has been set up at GIFT (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) City, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
What is GIFT city?
- It is a Central Business District being built between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in Gujarat
- Its main purpose is to provide high quality physical infrastructure(electricity, water, gas, district cooling, roads, telecoms and broadband), so that finance and tech firms can relocate their operations in it
- It will have a SEZ, international education zone, integrated townships, an entertainment zone, hotels, a convention centre, and international techno park, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) units, shopping malls, stock exchanges etc.
- Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Limited (GIFTCL) is responsible for developing and implementing the project. GIFTCL is a joint venture of Gujarat Urban Development Company Limited (GUDCOL) and Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS)
