Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange started trading in seafood

On 27 August 2009 Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange started trading in seafood with 320 metric tons of capelin on offer, reports http://www.fishnet-russia.com/ (https://www.fishnet.ru/) with reference to RBC Daily.

Only one lot of 320 tonnes of capelin was put up for sale. The starting price per tonne was RUR17,000 with the total sum thus making 5.4 million RUR. By the end of the first trading day the lot remained unsold, but the organizers claimed that there were potential buyers for the lot.

The idea of conducting seafood trades at the exchange has come mostly from the government's initiative and some of the market participants think that the project may grow fruitful. In the meantime, some traders greatly doubt that large suppliers will wish to sell fish via stock exchanges due to the lack of buyers willing to participate in such trades. The government's idea is to organize direct seafood sales from producers to processors thus avoiding extra margins of intermediaries, but the industry insiders evidently think the problem is not so urgent.