UPDATE 1-New commodities bourse to open in Singapore

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By Nick Trevethan

SINGAPORE, July 9 (Reuters) - India's Financial Technologies Group, operator of India's top commodities bourse, plans to launch a similar exchange in Singapore early next year, it said on Wednesday.

The Singapore Mercantile Exchange will provide a platform for futures and options trading on precious metals, base metals, energy, agricultural commodities, currency pairs, carbon credits and commodity indices, the group said in a statement.

It wasn't immediately clear how the exchange would operate.

"We have our own clearing house, the Singapore Mercantile Exchange Clearing Corporation," a spokeswoman at SMX said, but was unable to give further details.

"What will be very interesting will be to see as a pan-Asian exchange, in which currency these contracts will denominated. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to use the dollar," an executive with a futures commission merchant in Singapore who attended the event where the exchange was launched said.

Industry watchers said the exchange was likely to operate in a similar way to India's Multi Commodities Exchange, where Financial Technology (India) Ltd (FITE.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), the group's flagship listed company, owns a 32 percent stake.

But the market would need a lot more information before embracing the new trading venue, they said.