ABSTRACT
Asia has always been one of the three key commodity trading regions of the modern era, along with northern Europe and the United States. RIM has traditionally employed methodologies based on price reporters' survey assessments but Platts' introduction of a screen-based system to Japan has proved popular with market participants. Until the emergence of China as the major player in the Asian commodity markets from 2000 onwards, Japan and Singapore were generally the two locations where price reporting agencies (PRAs) focused their efforts in Asia. The other longstanding Asia-based PRA was the Asia Petroleum Price Index (APPI), which was published by Hong Kong-based Seapac Services. The major issue facing every PRA in China, whether foreign or domestic, is the strong government preference for regulated and exchange-traded futures benchmarks rather than PRA indexes. Two of the most important Chinese PRAs are the Sublime China Information Group (SCI Group) and SunSirs – China Commodity Data Group.
