KARACHI, Nov 20: Active trading was again witnessed on the cotton market on Thursday as spinners and mills were not inclined to take stock of their inventories before launching a fresh buying offensive.

The market witnessed a mad rush to grab floating stock of lint for the second session in a row as spinners and mills tried to purchase all the lots offered for sale by the ginners.

Most of the deals in fine varieties were done at Rs3,300 per maund, while central and lower Sindh varieties were sold between Rs2,800 to Rs3,100 per maund depending on the quality.

Floor brokers said about 65,000 bales have changed hands during the last two sessions, which in turn kept prices on the higher side and some of the leading ginners are holding on to their positions anticipating further increase in prices.

“Lint prices could rise further from the current levels owing to the prevailing war between the leading spinners and textile tycoons”, they said.

The crop is short but until sanity returns to buyers, the market will remain in the tight grip of ginners who also complain of higher phutti prices and their inability to bring the prices down, they said.

The private sector exporters were, however, conspicuous by their absence as the ruling prices were said to be well above their export parity levels but they are making physical shipments from their earlier established stocks to meet their shipment deadlines, dealers said.

During the month of September, private sector exporters had made a big physical shipment of lint cotton totalling about 92,000 bales, the record monthly figure being 0.108m bales shipped in August, according to official figures.

It was perhaps in this background that the official spot rates were raised by Rs50 to Rs3,200 per maund without 15 per cent sales tax.

New York cotton futures also resisted fresh decline and finished recovered by 0.30 and 0.47 cents at 71.53 and 76.66 cents per lb for both the ruling December and the March settlements respectively.

Ready offtake was on the higher side of the daily average as spinners continued to make extensive buying of all types and grades, the following being some of the notable deals, excluding 15 per cent sales tax.

SINDH TYPE: 400 bales, Sanghar at Rs2,900, 1,000 bales, Khairpur at Rs3,250.