KARACHI, April 17: Physical activity on the cotton market on Tuesday remained cheerless as spinners and mills were again conspicuous by their absence.
Spinners attributed the current standoff partly to problems on the export front and partly to higher asking prices by ginners, which are claimed to be expensive than their export parity levels.
Moreover, lower cotton yarn intake by the ancillary industry and falling export demand for the major textiles including cotton yarn are some of the other contributory negative factors.
Spinners and mills are worried over the delay in the announcement of the new incentive package rumoured to be agreed after several meetings between the officials and the APTMA members, analysts said. Ginners, on the other hand are apparently not worried over the prevailing lull on the cotton market as the unsold stocks lying in their ginneries are manageable, they said.
According to market sources ginners may not have more than 0.450m bales of unsold stocks with them as compared to 0.673m bales on April 1, as the ready off-take by the mills during the last fortnight was on the lower side of the daily average.
Meanwhile, as expected the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) did not release the final crop figures up to April 15, market sources said adding these may be out on May 1.
They said the revised total is expected to be around 12.24m bales, mostly of fine varieties from the upper Sindh and southern Punjab cotton belts.
Official spot rates were, therefore, again held unchanged at the previous level of Rs2,725.
But on the other hand New York cotton futures were marked down by 0.99 and 0.90 cents for both the ruling May and the forward July contracts at 50.38 and 52 cents per lb, respectively.
Ready off-take remained dull as till late in the evening no broker reported any deal from the cotton belt.
