April 30, 2006	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1427

KARACHI, April 29: Cotton market finished the weekend session on dull note amid falling ready offtake in the absence of strong mill buying owing to higher asking prices by some of the leading ginners.

Floor brokers said bulk of the unsold stock of around half a million bales was reportedly held by the ginners of southern Punjab, which has assumed the role of a busy trading centre in the recent past.

A good bit of physical business was reported by the central Punjab spinners, the details of which reach here a bit late, but spinners and mills were not sitting idle.

The rates at which agreements were finalized were in line with the quality of lint in trade, although ginners claimed that they had already cleared low-mic lots a couple of weeks earlier.

The daily off-take is, therefore, fluctuating on the mill demand and the rates, which are being quoted by the ginners for ready delivery as well as export parity level of the spinners, market source said.

Although the size of total crop is by now clear, there are no instances of panic buying even by the weaker links of the textile sector, they said, adding “the talk of imports appears to have no relevance to the ground realities”.

The current decline in New York cotton futures below the 50-cent per lb benchmark price was said to be within the spinners export parity levels but there were no reports about forward buying by any of the mills and spinners.

However, the supply gaps were being filled in by inter-mill trading as some of the spinners, who hold larger stocks than their actual annual requirements, were selling it to other mills both on cash and kind basis after the arrival of the new crop.

Reports coming in from the export front indicated that some of the private sector exporters had registered another 4,000 bales on April 23 with the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) against their forward sales. The total foreign sales during the current season totalled 0.275m bales, according to official figures.

New York cotton futures recovered from the previous lows and were quoted higher by 0.80 and 0.97 cents for both the maturing May and the distant July settlement at 49.90 and 51.72 cent per lb respectively.

But on the other hand official spot rates were again quoted unchanged at Rs2,425 per maund in the absence of feedback from the ready counter.

Unconfirmed reports put the ready off-take around 4,000 bales, purchased by the central Punjab spinners but details about the rates were not immediately available from the market sources.