January 19, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa'ad 15, 1423

KARACHI, Jan 18: Cotton market on Saturday remained in the tight grip of spinners who lifted all the lots offered for sale by the ginners followed by reports of unofficial reports of lower arrivals of phutti into the ginneries for the fortnight ended Jan 15.

“The market witnessed near-panic big-lot business for the second session in a row at the higher rates as leading spinner groups were out to grab the floating stock irrespective of the price tag”, leading cotton broker Naseem Usman said.

Spinners and mills are also worried over this negative development on the supply front as it is uneconomic to import lint from the foreign sources owing to higher prices.

“The unofficial arrival figure of 9.2m bales seems to have sent shock waves among the spinners and mills who indulged in nervous buying”, he added.

There was a general perception that the latest arrival figure could push the total crop close to a 10m bales mark but it was considered terribly short of the projections of both official and unofficial quarters.

The last fortnight’s arrivals showing an increase of about a million bales at 8.7m bales have raised hopes that the tempo may be maintained during the current fortnight also but the latest unofficial figure was surprising for the spinners.

“It is pretty difficult at this stage to assume whether or not the progressive growers are holding on to their phutti stocks”, market sources said adding “but many may not take the risk as the quality of phutti gets damaged owing to lack of proper storage facilities”.

But the general thinking is that growers have almost dumped bulk of their stocks last fortnight and now are engaged in mopping operations, they said.

The release of official figures is, therefore, keenly awaited as they will set the future direction of the market as well as price trend.

Official spot rates were, therefore, firmly held at the last levels, although in physical trading most of the deals were finalized at much higher rates.

New York Cotton futures on the other hand suffered modest decline of 0.89 and 0.76 cents per lb at 50.63 and 54.30 cents for both the ruling March and the forward May settlements respectively.

Ready business was active as till late in the evening about 25,000 bales changed hands as under:

SINDH TYPE: 1,000 bales, Kot Lalo at Rs2,150, 400 bales, each Moro and Gambat also at Rs2,150, 1,000 bales, Kot Deji at Rs2,140, 400 bales, Dharki at Rs2,250 and 7,000 bales, upper Sindh at Rs2,175 to Rs2,200.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 1,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs2,175 to Rs2,200, 2,000 bales, Sadiqabad at Rs2,175 to Rs2,200, 1,000 bales, Liaquatpur at Rs2,200 and 400 bales, Pull Thata at Rs2,180.