Colin Griffith

'With 25,000 gold contracts traded last Friday, we are very excited by the way the market has developed,' says Colin Griffith, Executive Director of Gold at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, and Director of the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange.

'But we can be pretty certain of much stronger growth in volumes because out of the 200 members who have joined the DGCX, only around 40% are trading so far. Also some of the most recent members like Deutsche Bank and Man are very big names in the business and likely to represent a lot of volume.'

Mr. Griffith happily concedes that the launch of the DGCX has been fortuitously timed with an upsurge in interest in commodities in general and precious metals in particular with gold now trading above $600 an ounce for the first time in 25 years.

'Given the position of Dubai in the gold trade, I never thought there was any doubt that it would work here. But clearly the market has moved in our favor and that has helped us.

'However, there have been a lot of late nights and missed weekends, and it is good to see this sort of effort rewarded. We still have a lot of new products that we will be rolling out, and it is partly a matter of getting the timetable right for these launches.'

DGCX expects to announce more details of its upcoming foreign currency contracts within a week or so, and Mr. Griffith explains that this initiative has been well received by the members who were not promised currency trading when they bought their seats on the exchange.

'This is a bonus for them, and we hope to start trading in late May or early June. It actually adds to the value of the DGCX memberships, which are tradable after a three-year period.

'We are also planning fuel oil and steel contracts in September or October, and are working with the trade to establish what they want. Other contracts we have in mind are cotton, sugar, pulses and spices.'

Perhaps not surprisingly Mr. Griffith is confident about attracting exchange members from around the world: 'Some potential members are the kind who will want to see an established trading market before they will commit, and others will see a pool of liquidity here that they would like to tap into, and there is obviously big liquidity in this region.

'We did a regional road show and visited five cities in India and two in Pakistan, all the Gulf States and Istanbul, but that is as far as we have got. We can cast our net much wider that this, and we already have members from the UK, US, South Africa and New Zealand, albeit small in number.'

Meanwhile, the impressive real estate being built for the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre is progressing well, and the DGCX is looking to move into the Au Tower sometime later next year from its temporary base. At its current speed of growth it is going to need the extra space.