11 July 2004	Sunday	22 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

KARACHI, July 10: Cotton prices on the local market suffered a fresh modest fall of Rs25 per maund as spinners and mills were not inclined to make fresh commitments.

Lint prices during the last week have fallen by Rs150 per maund without matching buying offers from the spinners despite the fact that ginners each day of the week lowered their asking prices in an effort to attract buyers, dealers said. "But the spinners are not inclined to oblige the ginners, although needy among them made stray covering purchases at the decline," they said.

Some of the southern Punjab ginners, who still hold a substantial unsold stock of contamination-free cotton, managed to lure leading spinners and sold 3,000 bales at a uniform rate of Rs2,700, claimed to be much below their parity levels.

Floor brokers said the spinners are eyeing the new crop as ginning operations were expected to resume by the middle of the next week, both in the lower Sindh and central Punjab cotton belts.

According to some leading spinners, the unsold stock lying with the ginners is of low-mic, which could be used for blending purposes only not as raw material for higher counts of cotton yarn. That is perhaps why they have kept to the sidelines.

The other factor behind the falling ready demand is higher asking prices as compared to the foreign stuff, which is better in quality as well as price-wise.

"The recent steep decline in the New York futures has changed the entire world price outlook as fine variety below 50 cents per lb is an attractive bait for any spinner," says a leading spinner.

Meanwhile, New York cotton futures maintained their downward drift and fell further by 0.15 and 0.30 cents for the both the ruling October and forward December at 47.85 and 48.48 cents per lb, respectively.

The notable feature was that the matured July contract was rung off the board and the October assumed the role of the ruling delivery. Ready offtake totalled about 3,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals: 1,100 and 1,000 bales from Rahimyar Khan and Jahania were sold at Rs2,700 per maund.