March 20, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 16, 1424

KARACHI, March 19: Cotton prices on Wednesday rose further as spinners continued to make panic buying amid fears of pressure on supplies after the US attack on Iraq.

The war fears seem to have gripped the market but the sellers and the buyers could not precisely decide how to react in the prevailing war-like situation and its impact on the world trade.

But spinners in terribly short position are being haunted by the feelers of a short crop and are making frantic efforts to grab the floating lint stock, dealers said.

After having purchased about 25,000 bales during the overnight dealings, some of the leading spinners took a pause apparently in an effort to contain prices within the current range, they said.

However, ginners have further raised their asking prices above Rs2,600 per maund and have, according to market sources, finalized some more deals on forward basis, mostly on one-month credit.

“I don’t think the lint prices could ease from the prevailing levels as supply and demand factors are guiding the market trend”, claims a ginner relying apparently on his holding capacity.

But on the other hand spinners and mills are hard-pressed amid fears that foreign lint could be more expensive after the war in Gulf starts any time during the next couple of sessions.

One thing appears certain that ginners will continue to be in a commanding position in the weeks to come until the final crop figures for the current month are released by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA), which will be closed to the final size of the current crop.

Meanwhile, some of the leading spinners have stepped up import against the previous signed forward contracts, with some foreign sellers at rates slightly above 50 cents per lb.

An idea of pick up in imports may well be had from the fact that between Feb 3 and March 8, 2003, about 88,000 bales arrived, making the total imports since Sept 1, 2002 to 0.334m bales.

Official spot rates were further raised by Rs15 to Rs2,565 per maund, although in physical trading some of the deals were done above them.

New York cotton futures suffered a modest fall of 0.49 and 0.55 cents per lb at 59.53 and 59.93 cents per lb for both the ruling May and the distant July settlements on speculative selling.

Ready business was light totalling about 5,000 bales, confined mainly to lint from the Punjab ginneries on rates depending on the quality of lint, brokers said.