August 27, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-us-Sani 28, 1424

KARACHI, Aug 26; Trading activity on the cotton market remained slow as spinners curtailed their daily offtake owing to increase in the asking prices of ginners followed by reports of second spell of rain in the lower Sindh cotton belt.

However, it was the day of wide price fluctuations as spinners offered to buy lots after ascertaining the micronaire of lint involved in trading. Those lots, whose quality was below an average mic were sold as a low as Rs2,535, while those lots whose quality was normal fetched the day’s highest rate of Rs2,600.

But spinners did try to resort to panic buying at the lower level and operated according to earlier planned buying strategy of “go slow”.

Floor brokers said spinners seem to have become more quality-conscious as far as the lint in trade is concerned as they have to operate in a highly competitive world textile market and the choice for a better quality of lint is now on the top of their buying strategy.

But some others said the spinner move appears to be psychological one to keep ginners at their toes all the time so that they may not further increase their asking prices.

“Being in a terribly short supply position, spinners could hardly dictate ginners who have the capacity to hold on to their stocks to get a competitive price for their lint”, they added.

They said the second rain spell has altogether changed the market outlook despite higher crop estimate and the current battle of wits over the prices between the spinners and the ginners will continue until picking operations resume in the upper Sindh and the southern Punjab cotton belts, the two major producers of quality and contamination-free lint.

Ginners say they have to base lint price at which rate the growers sell phutti to them and after adding conversion charges and other overheads, the price of lint is fixed.

They said growers are not willing to sell phutti below Rs1,050 against the official procurement price of Rs800 per 40 kg in Sindh and Rs1,100 in the central Punjab and that adds to the cost of lint.

Meanwhile, reports coming from the lower Sindh cotton belt show that the picking operations of phutti in some of the areas have been suspended and may resume after about a week if their are no fresh rain.

Official spot rates were again firmly held at the last levels but the New York cotton futures suffered a fresh fractional decline at 56 and 57.08 cents per lb for both the ruling October and the distant December contracts respectively.

Ready offtake was light totalling about 2,500 bales as under:

SINDH TYPE: 200 bales, Tando Adam at Rs2,575, 200 bales, at Rs2,600, 400 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs2,535 and 200 bales, at Rs2,550.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 700 bales, Samundri at Rs2,650 and 100 bales, Sahiwal also at the same rate.