KARACHI, July 13: Trading on the cotton market on Wednesday remained listless as spinners and mills adhered to the sidelines after having lifted well over 80,000 bales from the TCP’s Monday auction.

Floor brokers said limit-fall in New York cotton futures has changed the entire textile export outlook, which could well lead to a sympathetic decline in value-added products to the traditional markets.

New York cotton futures fell by limit loss of 3 cents per lb on strong speculative selling prompted by poor offtake of the US cotton by the foreign buyers as both, the ruling October and the distant December contracts were marked down to 50.15 and 52.01 cents per lb.

“We will remain an active buyers of the TCP lint during the next couple of auctions before Aug 14, but our immediate supply gaps have been adequately filled in,” most spinners and mills claim after having purchased about half a million bales from the TCP and well over 12m bales from the ginners.

A total of about 1.6m bales purchased by spinners and mills appears to be on the higher side of their annual consumption needs, brokers said adding their forward buying reflects a major breakthrough on the export front in the post-WTO regime.

But some others said mill buying appears to be aiming at building up a long position on the supply front, which will work as a buffer stock in case the new crop did not meet the production target of 15m bales, they said.

Owing to massive relief package given to the textile industry in the new budget, there is perceptible change in the textile perceptions, the emphasis being on more export to hit the target of $10 billion during the current fiscal, they added.

Bulk of the lint both from the TCP and the open market is being cornered by the big textile groups, who have larger export outlets and an enormous funds at their disposal, market sources said.

Official spot rates were firmly held at the last level of Rs2,325 per maund, while some inferior varieties were quoted lower around Rs2,200.

There were no reports of physical business as major buyers remained busy eyeing the TCP fine lint.