March 30, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 26, 1424

KARACHI, March 29: Spinners on Saturday took a technical breather and stayed on the sidelines most of the time apparently to have an overview of their inventories before making fresh commitments.

Physical business, therefore, remained at a low ebb, although some of the ginners were inclined to offer stray lots at the lower rates, brokers said.

Though of late, spinners seem to be in the process of evaluating the negative impact of Iraq war on the textile exports during the post-war months, they said.

“Why should we add to our value added products as the prospects of exports are not that encouraging,” says a spinner, adding “there appears to be no logic for going expensive lint.”

Leading spinners and mills are not clear about the post-war textile foreign trade, they said, adding prices could fall and rise depending on the victory and the defeat of the warring parties.

The weekend session appears to be the prelude of low volumes during the next week as spinners may extend guarded support and purchase on those lots which are in line with their export parity level of cotton yarn. But market sources attributed the weekend lull to the proximity of the crop figures due possibly next week, which will set the future trend for the market to follow.

Unlike the fortnightly arrival figures being released by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) since the beginning of the current season, it has opted for a monthly tally, which the spinners say could be the final crop figure.

And delay in the release of figures generated a lot of speculation in the cotton trade leading to a perception of a short crop, which in turn caused price flare-up since March 15, they added.

But it is too early to predict about the impact of lower crop figure on the local prices as much will depend on the size of the arrivals and the holding capacity of ginners, they said.

Meanwhile, reports coming from the yarn market and the end-product users indicate that spinners had already passed on a good part of the price flare-up to them, brokers said.

Official spot rates did not show any change and remained basically unchanged from the previous level because of falling ready business.

New York cotton futures on the other hand resisted fresh decline and recovered to finish higher by 0.54 and 0.63 cents per lb at 56.54 and 57.63 for both the ruling May and the distant July settlements, respectively.

Ready offtake remained a low ebb as leading brokers did not report any deal but reports coming from the southern Punjab cotton belt spinners made direct purchases for stray fine lint lots around Rs2,650 per maund.