KARACHI: Diminishing cotton demand from spinners kept proceedings on Monday extremely dull and dreary. With a listless session due to negligible, prices stayed pegged at overnight level.

The end season trading pattern in cotton market is responsible for the erratic behaviour, with some days witnessing a surge in cotton demand and others with no buying interest.

Ginners are currently holding less than 350,000 bales while the issue of quality is also aggravating.

However, it is encouraging that the yarn market is currently performing fairly well due to demand from domestic market and export front.

The market is eagerly looking forward to see the final cotton production report due in a couple of days. Therefore, there was hardly any evident on buying interest despite the fact many ginners were keen to dispose off their stocks even at lower rates.

On the global front, trade war between China and United States seems to have benefitted India due to higher cotton import by China from India. However, reports suggested that Indian textile industry is under severe crisis and many units are either being closed down or are offered on lease.

The Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) spot rates were firm at overnight level.

According to official announcements, no deal was reported to have transpired on ready counter although many ginners offered deals at lower rates. However, late in the evening some private deals of small lots were reported by brokers to have changed hands.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2018