The Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) on Monday launched the Shanghai Silver Benchmark Price Trading to further serve the real economy and consolidate the foundation of the silver market.

With a trading code of SHAG and a trading unit of 15 kg per lot, the SHAG contract is auctioned twice daily with five minutes for the issuance of reference prices and one minute to display the initial price. The AM session begins at 9:45 a.m. and PM session at 2:30 p.m.

The early fixing reached the price of 4,284 yuan (about 606.2 U.S. dollars) per kilo on Monday, while the afternoon fixing was 4,286 yuan.

Executed orders of the Shanghai Silver Benchmark Price Trading are cleared along with other SGE products under the same account, according to the rules. The transaction fees and physical delivery fees for SHAG will be exempted until Dec. 31, 2019.

The SGE launched gold benchmark price trading in April 2016.