China's futures market witnessed a sharp increase in trading volume in May, led by the active trading of farm products, including sugar, soybean, corn, zinc.

Trading volume hit 5 trillion yuan ($714 billion), representing an increase of 88 percent over the same period last year, according to figures released by the China Futures Association.

Market analysts attributed the increase to an improving domestic market environment, as well as fluctuating domestic farm product prices caused by surging grain prices in the world market and the snow disaster in the country earlier this year.

At Shanghai Futures Exchange, where metals such as gold, copper and zinc are mainly traded, the trade volume in May totaled 2 trillion yuan with 15.44 million in contracts, up 4.2 percent and 5.6 percent respectively. The growth rate climbed 19 percent over that of the previous month.

Zhengzhou Commodity Exchanges (ZCE) saw a trade volume of 1.15 trillion yuan in May, an increase of 376 percent over the same period last year.

Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE)'s trade volume totaled 1.88 trillion yuan in May, up 280 percent year on year or down 24 percent over April.

In terms of market share, trade volume of SHEF, ZCE and DCE accounted for 18 percent, 36 percent and 46 percent of China's total in May, respectively.

Futures markets nationwide realized 490 million contracts in the first five months valued at 29.5 trillion yuan, up 167 percent and 163 percent over the same period last year, respectively.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2008)