26 February 2004	Thursday	05 Muharram 1425

KARACHI, Feb 25: The cotton market on Wednesday showed an easy trend as some of the ginners indulged in fresh selling in a falling market amid slow activity. Official spot rates were lowered by Rs25 per maund to Rs3,100 , although some of the deals in the ready section were done well below them depending on the quality of lint in trade, dealers said.

Lint prices for an average quality of lint have fallen from the recent highs of Rs3,200 per maund to around Rs3,000 as the holding capacity of some of the ginners is weakening each day. Most of them have already started, in part, to liquidate their long positions, fearing a further decline if the spinners continued to keep to the sidelines in the coming weeks also.

"The market appears to be the victim of slack mill demand rather than any other bearish news," says a leading broker, adding "until mills resume their normal covering operations sluggishness will continue."

According to market sources ginners still hold an unsold stock of 1.5m bales, and if the crop figure touched the high mark of 10m bales, as officially maintained, it could rise further after the arrival figures for the fortnight ending Feb 29, are released by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA).

Some of the ginners, notably from the lower and central Sindh belt have already lowered their asking prices for the inferior verities in an apparent effort to clear the backlog well in time, they added.

Floor brokers said reports trickling in from the southern Punjab cotton belt indicate that leading spinners are lifting fine lots around Rs3,100 to Rs3,200 after ginners had lowered their asking prices from the recent peak level of Rs3.300 per maund.

But most of the deals are being finalized directly between them details of which are not immediately available here, they said. Meanwhile, New York cotton futures posted fresh modest rise of 0.30 and 0.51 cents per lb for both the maturing March and the ruling May contracts at 89.00 and 71.16 cents per lb, respectively.

Ready offtake was light totalling 4,000 bales as under: 200 bales, Sanghar at Rs2,700; 1,000 bales, Buhari at Rs2,900; 400 bales, Khanpur at Rs3,000; and Rs1,200 bales, Haroonabad at Rs3,050.