21 February 2004	Saturday	29 Zilhaj 1424

KARACHI, Feb 20: Cotton market on Friday resisted fresh decline as ginners held on to their positions anticipating further increase in prices in sympathy with higher New York cotton futures closing.

The sentiment in part was also influenced positively by reports of meeting of the official Crop Assessment Committee meeting in Multan on Saturday (Feb 21), which is expected to evaluate the final crop figure and will also find out the causes of crop failure in some of the areas including the substandard pesticides, market sources said.

However, it appears that there are two opinions about the size of the crop and the extent of damage to the standing crop by a late pest attack in some of the major producing areas of the southern Punjab cotton belt, they said.

Physical trading was relatively quiet ahead of the Multan meeting and buyers and sellers just marked time without indulging in hasty selling and buying. Floor brokers said the recovery staged by the New York cotton futures has sent a wave of optimism among the ginners as they were hopeful of a sympathetic positive impact on the local prices owing to expensive imports.

"Whether spinners will opt for the local stuff or go for the expensive foreign lint will be clear during the next couple of sessions by the next week," they added.

Some of the ginners holding long unsold positions in the southern Punjab belt have already raised their asking prices for the fine lots and they offered to sell quality lots between Rs2,350 to Rs3,300. Some of the spinners lifted big lots around these levels.

Meanwhile, official import figures of lint rose to 0.4m bales from the previous 0.359m bales, the highest monthly total being 0.141m bales which arrived in last December.

According to market sources, spinners had already made forward deals for about 0.8m bales with the foreign suppliers, shipments against which have started.

Official spot rates were, therefore, firmly held at the overnight levels, although some of the deals were done well above them. New York cotton futures on Thursday finished higher by 1.49 and 1.40 cents per lb for both the maturing March and the forward May contracts at 67.89 and 69.78 cents respectively. Ready business was light totalling about 3,000 bales, Khanpur done at Rs3,200 to Rs3,260.