August 23, 2007	Thursday	Sha’aban 9, 1428

KARACHI, Aug 22: Trading on the cotton market on Wednesday remained slow as buyers and sellers kept to the sidelines owing to heavy downpour which led to delivery problems.But cotton analyst Naseem Usman said about 2,000 bales from the central Punjab cotton belt changed hands at Rs3,300 and Sindh lint was traded around Rs3,175 on deferred delivery basis.

However, he was of the view that it may not be easy to contain an imminent price flare-up as the local crop was short of about two million bales as industry’s demand in the recent past had swelled to 16m bales.

Some others said the rain spell in the Punjab cotton belt may have washed away the pests that attacked the crop recently as in normal rainy conditions the pest damage to crop was generally minimised.

Floor brokers said there were several enquiries from some of the local spinners but ginners had further raised their asking prices followed by reports that arrivals of phutti had almost dried up for the last couple of days.

The current monsoon spell, they said, covered the entire cotton belt in Sindh where both the ginning and picking operations of phutti remained suspended for a brief period.

Already, lint prices had recovered from the last week’s low of Rs2,900 per maund to Rs3,200 on Tuesday and analysts fear the temporary supply gap could push prices up to their pre-reaction level of Rs3,450.

Official spot rates remained pegged at the previous level of Rs3,000 per maund, although stray business was done well above them.