According to SEBI, all commodity exchanges are required to classify the market participants into various categories. MCX collects this information from the broker. A trader can give this information through the Commodity Declaration option available in Console for various traded commodity contracts by visiting console.zerodha.com/account/mcx-classification.

The categories are:

• Farmers Producers Organisations(FPO): These include participants such as farmers, farmers’ cooperatives and other entities of similar nature.
• Value chain participants (VCPs): It includes participants such as processors, commercial users such as dal and flour millers, importers, exporters, physical market traders, stockists, cash & carry participants, produces, SMEs or MSMEs,  wholesalers, etc., but exclude farmers and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs).
• Proprietary traders: These include the members of stock exchanges trading in their proprietary accounts.
• Domestic financial institutional investors: These include participants such as mutual funds (MFs), portfolio managers, alternative investment funds (AIFs), banks, insurance companies, pension funds, etc., which are allowed to trade in commodity derivatives.
• Foreign participants: It includes participants such as eligible foreign entities (EFEs), NRIs, etc., which are allowed to trade in commodity derivatives markets.
• Others: All other participants who cannot be classified in the above categories.

If participants are not actively involved in producing or distributing any particular commodity, choose the Others option from the drop-down. The category has to be selected individually for each commodity.