December 5, 2003	Friday	Shawwal 10, 1424

KARACHI, Dec 4: Cotton market on Thursday maintained an uppish leaning as ginners held on to their positions anticipating further increase in prices owing to modest fall in the latest arrival figures.

But in physical trading both spinners and ginners seem to have maintained a status quo as the latter did not opt for squeeze on supplies and readily sold their stocks around Rs3,300 per maund, the rate being quoted for the last couple of sessions for the fine lots.

Some of the leading spinners and mills having by now a fair idea of the total crop, did indulge in big-lot business and tried to grab the floating stock of fine lots around Rs3,300.

A big deal of 5,000 bales from a southern Punjab ginnery signals that some other spinners and mills will follow suit during the coming sessions.

Floor brokers said although decline of 0.130m bales in the arrival figures at 6.438m bales as compared to last year’s comparable figure of 6.717m bales is modest, the general perception is that the next fortnight figure may be much lower.

“The arrival of phutti into the ginneries is drying up each day and the wild guess about the size of the crop is expected to spring many a pleasant surprises”, they said.

The ginners are eyeing further increase in prices during the coming weeks and that is perhaps why they are holding on to their larger unsold stock of 1.706m bales.

The total offtake of 4.745m bales of the spinners shows that they are making slow commitments hoping a decline in prices in response to world rates. However, the higher local prices have outwitted the private sector exporters who stood on the sidelines owing to negative parity levels.

Official spot rates were, therefore, held unchanged at the overnight levels but in the ready section most of the deals were finalized above them.

New York cotton futures on the other hand came in for stray speculative selling and fell by 0.30 and 0.95 cents at 68.20 and 72.63 cents per lb for both the maturing December and the ruling March contracts respectively.

Ready business was active as till late in the evening about 20,000 bales changed hands, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH VARIETY: 1,000 bales, Sanghar at Rs3,025, 200 bales, Bucheri at Rs3,150 and 200 bales, Daur at Rs3,175.

PUNJAB TYPE: 5,000 bales, Bahawalpur, 400 bales, Jampur, 1,000 bales, Yazman, 1,600 bales, Maddarrasha, 1,000 bales, D.G.Khan, at Rs3,300, 1,000 bales, Vehari and 1,000 bales, Hasilpur at Rs3,250 to Rs3,300.