China's first rare earth exchange "Baotou Rare Earth Products Exchange" saw 15.13 billion yuan or 2.44 billion US dollars of traction value in the first half of this year, nearly three times of that of the whole year of 2014, China News Service reported on Monday.

The Baotou Rare Earth Products Exchange, China’s first national trading platform of its kind, opened in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on March 28, 2014 after three-month trial operation.

It has three spot transaction modes, namely price bidding, listed trading and real-time trading online, with more than 10 trading items including cerium oxide, praseodymium-neodymium oxide and europium oxide.

In the first half of this year alone, 16 new corporate exchange accounts and 13 new individual investors were added. Up to now, 110 rare earth firms and 270 investors have opened accounts with the exchange.