April 11, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1427

KARACHI, April 10: Trading on the cotton market on Monday resumed on an insipid note as buyers kept to the sidelines most of the time owing to Tuesday’s closure on account Eid Milad-un-Nabi.

Owing to Tuesday’s public holiday, some of the local spinners needing immediate supplies kept to the sidelines owing to delivery problems and indulged in inter-mill trading to fill in the supply gaps.

The inter-mill trading relates to physical supplies in kind as the mill in short supply borrows certain number of bales from its counterparts to meet pressing demands and return it after the market reopens, market sources said.

Floor brokers said stray lots did change hands at around Rs2,450, but spinners and mills appeared to be more interested in buying fine lots rather than low-mic ones.

But some of the producers of low-count cotton yarn also lifted inferior lots from the central Sindh cotton belt to produce 10-count yarn at their open-end facilities, they said.

However, fine lots both from the upper Sindh and the southern Punjab cotton belt where bulk of unsold stocks are lying in ginner godowns remained in strong demand, as some of the leading spinners and mills were buyers at Rs2,475 per maund.

Market sources said the normal activity was expected to be resumed by Wednesday as the TCP tender for 30,000 bales, to be opened on April 18, was still far away.

Official spot rates were again quoted unchanged at the weekend levels but some of the deals reported in the ready section were well above them.

Ready offtake was modest as totalling about 6,000 bales, including big-lots of 1,400 bales, upper Sindh at Rs2,375 to Rs2,475 and 3,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs2,400 to Rs2,475, respectively.