KARACHI, July 29: New crop lint prices on Saturday showed fresh modest increase followed by reports of slowdown in arrivals of phutti into the lower Sindh ginneries owing to rain.

For the first time after trading was resumed in new crop lint from the lower Sindh cotton belt, most of deals were done well above Rs2,500 per maund, which is the highest so far.

“The new crop supplies are too small to meet the local mill demand and that is perhaps why prices are inching up modestly as demand outpaced stocks,” some ginners said.

The forecast of heavy rain in the lower Sindh cotton belt on Sunday and Monday could further aggravate the supply situation and in turn fresh increase in prices, they added.

Identical supply and demand position is also reported in the central Punjab cotton belt where about a dozen ginneries in Burewala, Sahiwal and some other stations have resumed operations early this month.

According to reports reaching here picking operations of phutti in most of the lower Sindh cotton growing areas remained suspended as the weather is cloudy amid forecast of fresh rain.

“As the moisture still persists on the bolls which are in picking stage, growers did not allow resumption of picking operations as the quality of phutti gets damaged,” they said.

They said normal picking operations are expected to be resumed by the middle of the next week if there is no fresh rain in between and cotton pickers would await the return of dry and warm weather before resuming operations.

Official spot rates were, therefore, firmly held at the last level of Rs2,500 per maund but some of the deals in the ready section in new crop were done above them.

New York cotton futures on the other hand posted fractional rise of 0.10 and 0.14 cents at 53.70 and 55.54 cents per lb for both the ruling October and the distant December settlements respectively.

Ready off-take was modest at 1,500 bales, all new crop from Sindh ginneries as under: 200 bales, Tando Adam and 400 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs2,510, 400 bales, Tando Adam at Rs2,500 and 200 bales, Sanghar at Rs2,475.