KARACHI, June 16: Cotton market on Thursday showed firm trend as a section of spinners sought supplies from the ginners to cover their immediate consumption needs. And in the process, official rate committee of the Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) raised spot rates by Rs25 per maund, although stray business being done in the ready section is finalized at much higher rates, market sources said.

While the official spot rates were revised upward to Rs2,250 per maund, in physical trading fine lots are being sold around Rs2,425 or above as spinners are said to be active buyers at this rates, they said.

However, stray lots are changing hand above Rs2,400 as leading spinner groups are out to lift all the lots being offered by the TCP because of quality factors, they said.

The TCP is offering 60,000 bales, mostly from its Karachi godowns tomorrow in its weekly auction. Both foreign buyers and local mills are invited to participate in it, brokers said.

Indications are that the TCP may get a positive response, notably from the local spinners and mills as they still need about 0.3m bales to see the current year ending Aug 31, through, they said.

They said the interesting feature of the TCP sales is that they are guided by the supply and demand factors rather than international prices. But foreign buyers are not inclined to bid above the world prices and that is perhaps why their intake in the auctions for the last couple of weeks is terribly modest.

“Tomorrow’s (June 17) TCP auction is expected to shape the future market trend as ginners vowed to raise further their prices well above its rates,” brokers said adding “we may not have large unsold stocks but are inclined to cash in on the available ones.”

New York cotton suffered modest fall of 0.53 and 0.50 cents per lb for the maturing July and the new crop October at 47.07 and 49.38 cents per lb respectively but did not influence local rates.

Ready off-take was modest and mostly confined to inter-mill deals and stray lots from the central Sindh ginneries.