November 29, 2002	Friday	Ramazan 23, 1423

KARACHI, Nov 28: Cotton prices on Thursday fell from the recent higher levels as leading spinners were again conspicuous by their absence for technical as well as tactical reasons.

“Spinners’ over-enthusiastic attitude witnessed during the last couple of sessions amid fears of short supply seems to have found a real cue to future supply and demand positions,” one broker said “the go-slow is reflective of the fact that crop projections are in line with their original estimates”.

Both spinners and leading textile mills, therefore, took a technical breather to have an overview of their stock positions before resuming new account buying.

But ginners and growers took it as a tactical move to unnerve them leading to panic selling by some of their weaker links, dealers said. Both of them did lower their prices, although most of the downward revisions were based on quality rather than as panic in the absence of strong mill demand.

Some of the deals in the Punjab variety were, therefore, done as lower as Rs1,930 per maund on the lower side, while fine lots were on average traded around Rs2,100 per maund.

The breach of the Rs2,000 price level by the local lint is always considered a prelude to further fall but whether or not the growers will allow it, will be seen during the next couple of days.

But there is no denying the fact that lint prices are slipping from the current levels although it is difficult to pinpoint at this stage “whether or not because of quality factors”, market sources said.

The interesting feature is that local prices appear to be totally immune to the international developments on the cotton front and are mostly guided by the current demand and supply factors, they added.

It was perhaps in this background that the official spot rates were lowered by Rs50, wiping out last three sessions gains and were quoted at Rs2,050 per maund.

New York cotton futures on the other hand resisted fresh decline and were quoted higher by 0.30 cents per lb at 47.50 cents for the ruling December contract but held unchanged for the March delivery at 50.18 cents per lb.

Ready offtake was active and amounted to 25,000 bales including some big deals, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH TYPE: 2,000 bales, Nawabshah at Rs2,040 and 300 bales, Sanghar at Rs1,975.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 5,000 bales, Bahawalpur at Rs2,075 to Rs2,100, 2,000 bales, Ahmedpur East at Rs2,075, 5,000 bales, Lodhran at Rs2,075 to Rs2,100, 1,000 bales, 600 bales, 1,200 bales and 1,000 bales, Khanpur, Galawali, Shujabad and Rajanpur at Rs2,100, 2,000 bales, D.G.Khan at Rs2,050 to Rs2,075, 500 bales Gojra at Rs2,025, 400 bales, Pir Mahal at Rs1,965 and 200 bales, Manmu Kanjan at Rs1,930.