KARACHI, April 6: Cotton prices on Wednesday eased modestly as spinners again kept to the sidelines and did not allow ginners to have a second thought how to exploit terribly lower unsold figures. The spinners and mills still need a lot of lint to cover their forward positions against foreign sales but were in no mood to pay more than the prevailing prices and stayed on the sidelines. They instead expressed their concerns about the quality of leftover lint in an effort to keep the ginners at their toes all the times, brokers said adding that was perhaps why ready business had shrunk to a modest proportion.
A war of wits between the ginners and the spinners is expected to further intensify during the coming weeks as both will try to tilt the price balance in their respective favour, they said.
But market sources said highly volatile price movements on the New York Cotton Exchange reflected that the future cotton price outlook might remain unstable in the backdrop of falling demand and the absence of China from the international trading centres.
Echoes of erratic price movements on the New York futures market will continue to affect local trading, although spinners may like to lift the unsold stock of 0.488m bales rather than opting for fresh imports, they said.
Meanwhile, textile sources are silent on the import figure of half a million bales and did not deny or confirm the market estimate. However, no shipment of imported stuff was reported by the port sources or official import figures.
Owing to the absence of spinners, official spot rates were lowered by Rs25 per maund at Rs2,250 for average quality of lint.
New York cotton futures also suffered modest decline of 0.55 and 0.60 cents per lb at 52.05 and 53.75 cents per lb for both the ruling May and the forward July settlements, respectively.
While the spinners and mills were conspicuous by their absence, private sector exporters lifted stray lot of inferior stuff from central Sindh ginners as under: 400 bales, each Shahdadpur and Sanghar at Rs2,050.
