21 January 2004	Wednesday	28 Ziqa'ad 1424

KARACHI, Jan 20: Cotton market on Tuesday passed through another cheerless session as spinners remained conspicuous by their absence owing to delivery problems.

Stray lots, however, did change hands as some of the spinners and mills holding short positions made selective covering purchases mostly against their forward sales of higher counts of cotton yarn.

Spinners seem to have ignored the possible negative impact of below market arrival figures of phutti for the fortnight ended Jan 15, which fell to 8.870m bales as compared to market projection of 9m plus bales.

"The buying interest is drying up each session, although Eid holidays are still about two weeks away," says a leading broker, adding "higher fare being demanded by the cargo haulers appears to be one of the reasons behind the current slowdown in the ready activity."

Some spinners attributed the current fall in physical trading to larger imports by some of the leading spinner groups, both from India and some central Asian countries.

"For the last two sessions yarn sales, both local and foreign, have shown a considerable decline followed by easing in ready rates, which in turn has a negative impact on our daily market operations," they said.

There is also an enormous pressure on the spinners's liquidity positions as higher lint prices have almost doubled their investment on the inputs which in turn had curtailed their daily buying operations, market sources said.

There is a perception and shared by some leading spinners that ginners have to lower their rates from the current higher levels as larger unsold stocks lying in their ginneries will force them to sell owing to fears of deterioration in quality premiums.

However, one thing appears certain that the direction of the market will be guided by the total imports of lint from various sources possibly after the Eid holidays.

There was no change in the official spot rates, which were held unchanged but some of the deals in the ready section were done in line with the quality premiums.

Ready business was modest as till late in the evening about 10,000 bales changes hands as under: 1,000 bales, Burewala at Rs3,165; 1,000 bales, Hasilpur at Rs3,250; 1,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs3,300; 400 bales, Chichawatni at Rs3,150; 500 bales, Haroonabad at Rs3,200 and 600 bales at Rs3,200; and 320 bales, Vehari at Rs3,250.