One of mainland China’s primary futures exchanges is calling on the government to okay the formation of commodity futures funds in an effort to attract more institutional investors. “The proportion of institutional investors in the country’s futures market is too low, at only 5%, and the rest are individual investors,”  Dalian Commodities Exchange President and CEO Liu Xingqiang said in an interview with South China Morning Post. Liu said that for the futures market to develop, there needs to be not only more IIs but also more futures products, which would need approval of the China Securities Regulator Commission. The three commodity futures exchanges on the mainland—Dalian, Shanghai Metal Exchange and Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange--had a combined turnover last year of US$5.75 trillion, a 95% increase over 2006. More than half the trading transactions are handled buy Dalian. Liu also is pressing the government to let companies use money they borrow from banks for hedging in the future market, though not to allow those funds for speculation.