London, 18 October 2010

A commodities and currency exchange will go live in Mauritius today offering a local platform for investors worldwide eyeing Africa's rich resources.

The African continent is the world's most impoverished region, but commodity-hungry economies such as China are increasingly eyeing investment opportunities. "Mauritius is the gateway to Africa. We feel that in the next 30 to 40 years Africa will play a very important role in the financial life of the globe," said Venkat Chary, chairman of the exchange, known as the Global Board of Trade (GBOT).

"GBOT will commence trading on its state-of-the-art electronic exchange platform with efficient clearing and settlement systems to ensure counterparty guarantee for all trades and will initially offer trading in Gold, Silver, USD/MUR, ZAR/USD, EUR/USD, GBP/USD, JPY/USD," say the Exchange.

Regulated by Financial Services Commission (FSC), GBOT is strategically located at the crossroads of Africa and Asia and offers an ideal platform for global investors to access many of the world's fastest growing economies from Mauritius.

GBOT is promoted by the Financial Technologies Group, a global leader in setting up and operating tech centric next generation exchanges in the emerging but fast growing economies from Africa to Asia and Middle East to South East Asia. The Group operates one of the largest exchange network comprising 10 exchanges and 6 ecosystem ventures which address upstream and downstream opportunities around exchanges, including clearing, depository, information vending, and payment gateway among others.

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