KARACHI, July 23: Cotton market finished the weekend session on a quietly steady note but the physical business remained slow, although some brokers reported few deals both in upper Sindh and southern Punjab lint.

However, the details of daily mill off-take were not passed on to the Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) by the brokerage houses involved in the physical transactions, dealers said.

Moreover, spinners and mills remained active buyers of the TCP lint and so far had purchased about 0.7m bales in addition to 12m bales from the local ginners, while their weaker link were the sole buyers from the ginners on a modest scale, they said.

Market sources said that ginners were not expected to benefit from the recent recovery in the New York cotton futures as they were already selling lint around these levels in line with the TCP auction rates.

The New York cotton futures rose by 1.30 and 1.16 cents per lb for both the ruling October and the forward December settlements to a coveted level and benchmark at 50.20 and 51.76 cents per lb respectively.

Ginners may still be holding onto modest stocks of unsold lot, the daily mill off-take seldom touched the high figure of 4,000 to 5,000 bales as only few hundred bales changed hands.

Most of the ginners, notably from the central Punjab after having cleared the backlog are now eyeing the lower Sindh phutti and buying two to three truck loads daily around Rs1,100 per maund.

Floor brokers said the central Punjab ginners unlike their lower Sindh counterparts have resumed ginning operations based on Sindh phutti well ahead of them and would open the new season with new crop during the next couple of sessions.

Some of the lower Sindh ginners have already signed forward deals for the new crop both at Rs2,425 per maund and at the spot rate on the date of delivery but Punjab ginners are expected to be the new crop trend-setters, they said.

There was no change in the official spot rates in the absence of feedback from the ready market and were quoted at Rs2,375 per maund.