January 21, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 01, 1428

KARACHI, Jan 20: Trading on the cotton market on Saturday remained slow as spinners curtailed their daily intake owing to higher asking prices by the ginners. Some of the leading mills did lift stray lots above Rs2,600 per maund, but their weaker links opted for central Sindh variety which was a bit cheaper, floor brokers said.

Fine lots from the southern Punjab ginneries, notably Rahimyar Khan and Sadiqabad were sold as higher as Rs2,625 per maund.

Leading spinners and mills are now blending inferior lots with fine types to remain competitive on the world textile markets as any price above Rs2,600 per maund render them uncompetitive on the export front, they said.

However, ginners were happy to note that textile exports were slowly picking up and hoped that the mill daily off-take could show correspondence increase.

Some of the ginners who still hold long unsold positions of about 1.8m bales are a bit worried as they have to pay higher interest rates on them, market sources said.

On the cotton export front, private sector exporters have so far registered forward sales contracts totalling 0.132m bales up to Jan 15, which also include 78,269 bales of the current crop.

According to official figures about 92,212 bales have been shipped to various countries and some more consignments are in the process to meet shipment deadlines, exporters said.

Official spot rates were again held unchanged at the last level of Rs2,550 per maund for average quality lint.

New York cotton futures on the other hand showed fractional rise of 0.02 and 0.04 cents at 54.55 and 55.48 cents per lb for both the ruling March and the forward May contracts respectively.

Ready off-take was modest totalling about 10,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals: 1,000 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs2,540-2,550, 1,000 bales, Shahdadpur at Rs2,490-2,530, 200 bales, Nayabad at Rs2,530, 100 bales, Tando Adam at Rs2,530, 2,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs2,575-2,625 and 1,000 bales, Sadiqabad at Rs2,575-2,610.