March 28, 2008	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 19, 1429

KARACHI, March 27: Physical activity on the cotton market on Thursday picked up as some of the ginners lowered their asking prices ending the current standoff between them and the spinners on the parity rates after several lean sessions, floor brokers said.

Spinners were not inclined to miss an apparent breakdown of the cartel and lifted about 15,000 bales just in one go offered by the weaker links of the leading ginners, they said.

After having cleared the backlog of inferior lots, ginners were steadily holding on to their unsold positions of fine lots of about 1.2 million bales and are not inclined to sell them below Rs3,400 per maund, said a leading cotton analyst Naseem Usman.The chief victim has been the daily off-take, which generally used to be at peak levels at this time of the season as spinners and mills make it sure to cover their forward export positions to ensure adequate supplies and to avoid end-season price flare-up, they added.

Moreover, spinners and mills are not worried over the future supplies as they have imported well over three million bales of lint from various sources after the size of the crop was known.

Market sources said an idea of panic imports by spinners may well be had from the fact that they imported about 0.565 million bales alone during the last month.

As a result, spinners are opting for only those lots which are in line with their export parity levels and are not inclined to go beyond them owing to falling world textile markets and tough competition.

Meanwhile, the private sector exporters registered forward export deals till March 23 with the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan for 0.167 million bales against which they have already physically shipped 0.149 million bales by the same period.Official spot rates were again firmly held at the last close of Rs3,300 per maund, although some of the deals were done above them.

The New York cotton futures on the other hand suffered a modest fall of 0.34 and 0.36 cents per lb at 73.79 and 77.20 for both the ruling May and the distant July contracts, respectively.

Mills ready off-take was on the higher side amounting to about 20,000 bales from the Punjab and the upper Sindh ginneries as under: 2,000 bales, upper Sindh at Rs3,300 to Rs3,410; 2,000 bales, and 1,000 bales, Shujabad and Lodhran at 3,300; 3,000 bales, Khanpur and 2,000 bales, Rahim Yar Khan at Rs3,400, and 800 bales, Jahania at Rs3,515.