16 May 2004	Sunday	25 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

KARACHI, May 15: Steady conditions prevailed on the cotton market on Saturday as buyers and sellers kept to the sidelines ahead of release of final crop figures by PCGA early next week.

Market sources say the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, an apex body of cotton ginners, has compiled the final crop figures after receiving details from its members and will make it public on next Monday or Tuesday.

"The twice-revised official total of 10m bales may not be reached", the sources said adding "the consensus figure could be around 9.8m bales." These are figures for the organized textile sector minus the unaccounted number of bales.

According to some insiders about half a million bales are not added to official final figures for various reasons including sales tax evasion and sales to the unorganized sector.

The total crop, therefore, could be around the official figure of 10m bales but according to PCGA figures it may not touch the total of 9.9m bales, they said.

But irrespective of the final total, spinners and mills have managed to contain an imminent price flare-up for the second time during the current season after having resorted to larger imports to fill-in the supply gaps as well as rise in rates.

"I don't think the unsold stock with the ginners could exceed the total of 0.7m bales," says a local ginner adding "that could prove a bullish factor fuelling the price flare-up during the post-budget sessions."

He said the recent increase in world prices had made the local stuff more expensive as ginners now calculated their selling prices based on foreign markets.

The prevailing standoff between the ginners and the spinners is reflected in the falling daily volumes, he said adding "the strong holding capacity of ginners is now playing a pivotal role in price mechanism".

Meanwhile, spinners have so far imported about 1.3m bales of lint from different sources and another 0.2m bales are claimed to be in the pipeline. Indications are that mills may need more lint in the backdrop of higher export of cotton yarn, increase in annual mill-intake and competitive local prices.

Official spot rates were, therefore, held unchanged as ginners were not inclined to sell their fine lots below Rs3,100-Rs3,200 per maund.

New York cotton futures on the other hand reacted modestly from the previous highs on stray speculative selling, off 0.37 and 0.40 cents at 64.97 and 62.70 cents per lb respectively for both the ruling July and forward October delivery.

Ready offtake was light totalling 1,000 bales, sold by the ginners above Rs3,000. A low-mic lot of 200 bales, from Hasilpur changed hands at Rs2,700.