June 20, 2006	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 23, 1427

KARACHI, June 19: Trading on the cotton market on Monday resumed on a dull note as spinners remained conspicuous by their absence apparently in a tactical move to force ginners to lower their asking prices.

But ginners said the unsold stock of around 0.150m bales was manageable until arrival of the new crop from the lower Sindh cotton belt and this was not a financial problem for the stockholders. Bank overdraft limits have already been adjusted against them and renewed for the new cotton season. “The ball is now in the court of spinners and mills, notably those who are still short of their annual consumption needs,” says a leading ginners from the southern Punjab cotton belt who reportedly hold a half of the total unsold stock. ”It could be easily carried to the next season as the quality of lint is well-protected through modern safe steps”.

Although the TCP tender for 33,000 bales scheduled for June 26 is still far away, the spinners decided to take a technical breather in an effort not to heat up the market without any compelling supply reasons, some others said.

As a result, ready off-take remained light as both the buyers and sellers adhered to their parity levels and were not inclined to go beyond them, hence the prevailing sluggishness.

Meanwhile, reports reaching here about Sunday’s rain in some of the central Punjab cotton belt is good for the earlier sown plants but there may be stray re-sowing in some of the areas where it was sown just around official deadline of June 15, local marker sources said.

But the condition of the crop in the lower Sindh cotton belt is said to be fairly satisfactory where some of the growers are planning to resume picking operations of phutti by the end of the current month and early next month.

Market sources said the new crop of lower Sindh is expected to arrive here by late next month according to some of the forward deals finalised between the ginners and spinners at around Rs2,500 per maund. Whether or not there could be a default on the part of some of the ginners owing to the current rise in lint prices would be known at the delivery time, they added.

Official spot rate were again firmly held at the last levels as the feedback from the active market was not that aggressive and some of the deals were confined to fine lots.

Ready off-take was modest totalling 400 bales, from Sarhari, a Sindh ginnery, done at Rs2,600 per maund.