December 18, 2003	Thursday	Shawwal 23, 1424

KARACHI, Dec 17: Cotton market on Wednesday remained under pressure as ginners continued to liquidate their long positions fearing fresh fall in prices followed by reports of import of the commodity from various sources, including India.

Arrival figures of phutti for the fortnight ended on Dec 15, at about 7.5m bales were in line with the market thinking and triggered fresh selling from some of the weaker ginners who tried to get out of their unsold stocks at the prevailing prices.

Out of the total, spinners and mills have so far purchased 5.4m bales, leaving an unsold stock of 1.2m bales with the ginners, the same total left a year ago.

Floor brokers said the arrival figures did not show much change as compared to the last year’s figures for the same period, raising hopes that the crop may not be that short as widely being speculated.

However, their immediate impact on prices was bearish as together with reports of larger imports of foreign stuff, the total availability is expected to be much higher than the actual consumption needs of the industry, hence decline in price.

As a result, official spot rates were lowered by Rs50 per maund but in physical trading most of the deals were finalized between Rs3,000 and Rs3,150 per maund for fine varieties from upper Sindh and the southern Punjab cotton belts.

According to official figures, 0.2m bales had already been imported by the spinners since Aug to Sept 30, and an identical amount is claimed to be on its way from a number of countries.

As a result, ginners further lowered their asking prices fearing further decline owing to panic selling by their weaker links, dealers said.

New York cotton futures also showed easy trend on active speculative selling and were quoted lower by 0.65 and 0.57 cents per lb at 69.92 and 71.10 cents per lb for both the ruling March and the distant May contracts, respectively.

Read offtake was relatively slow as spinners kept to the sidelines, anticipating further decline in prices. As a result, about 30,000 bales changed hands, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH TYPE: 1,000 bales, Sarhai at Rs2,950; 600 bales, Sanghar at Rs2,600 to Rs2,800; 500 bales, Khairpur at Rs3,000; and 3,000 bales, upper Sindh at Rs3,175.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 2,000 bales each from Sadiqabad and Rahimyar Khan at Rs3,100 to Rs3,175; 5,000 bales and 6,000 bales, Bahawalpur at Rs3,100 to Rs3,150; 3,000 bales, Burewala at Rs3,000 to Rs3,100; 2,000 bales, D.G.Khan at Rs3,100 to Rs3,150; 1,000 bales, Mailsi at Rs3,100; 1,000 bales, each from Lodhran and Jalalpur at Rs3,150.