P.M. BRIEFING : U.S. Firms Aid Moscow Exchange
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MOSCOW — The Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange agreed today to provide training and technical advice to help the fledgling Moscow Commodities Exchange grow from “one step above barter” into a Western-style market.
The agreement with the two American organizations is designed to help the entrepreneurs who set up the five-month-old Moscow exchange as they struggle to break away from 70 years of central planning and set up a free market for materials.
Currently, just about anything from construction materials to radios can be directly traded and sold at the exchange’s small monthly sessions in a corner of a Moscow exhibition hall--if someone has the materials to trade.
The exchange plans to expand to two sessions a month by the end of the year, and organizers hope eventually to deal in contracts and establish a futures market as well as set up a currency exchange as the ruble moves toward convertibility.
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