KARACHI, July 22: The cotton market passed through another dull session but some of spinners lifted stray lots of inferior quality from central Sindh ginners for blending purposes to produce lower counts of cotton yarn for the local consumers.

Spinners said: “Despite duty cuts in the budget, polyester prices stayed on the higher side of our export parity levels and as result we have reduced its intake and are currently compensating it with the inferior type of lint.”

The blended cloth and yarn is now keenly sought after commodity in the foreign market for various reasons. As a result, the ratio of blending of lint with polyester fibre, in some case, has touched a high mark of 40 per cent as compared to the previous 25 to 30 per cent, the spinners said.

According to market sources, upper Sindh and southern Punjab ginners had already cleared the backlog of the inferior staple length lint and were holding on to modest lots of fine and contamination-free lint.

Although some of the spinners and mills are buying fine lots from them at around Rs2.450 to Rs2,500 per maund in line with the TCP selling rates, unsold stocks held by them are in no way a bullish factor, brokers said.

“We are a little worried over the fall in mill demand,” ginners said. “The leftover stocks do not pressure our liquidity positions as we have already cleared the bank overdraft limits for the year ended June 30, 2005 and get them renewed for the new fiscal.”

Meanwhile, private sector exporters have accelerated the pace of shipments of lint against their forward deals as they physically shipped 28,977 bales during the month of June, raising total to 0.493m bales against the forward sales of 0.779m bales up to June 30, 2005.

New York cotton futures, which recovered from the recent lows, however, did not influence the local prices, although ginners are not willing to sell their stocks at the official spot rates.

The ruling October contract was quoted higher by 0.65 cents per lb at 48.90 on trade short-covering, while the forward December rose by 0.71 cents at 50.60 cents per lb.

There was, however, no change in the official spot rates, which were firmly held unchanged at the overnight levels.