KARACHI: In the absence of buying interest the cotton market on Saturday remained dull. Traders were in festive mood and stayed away from the trading ring.

Trading on ready counter remained listless and no transaction was reported to have changed hands.

The issue of zero-rating continues to cause uncertainty amongst value-added textile sectors which is strongly opposing the withdrawal of the facility.

Meanwhile a ginning unit at Sanghar has started ginning new crop phutti (2019-20) after receiving around 200 bales. Other reports suggest that another ginning unit at Mirpurkhas has also received around 200 bales of new crop phutti but have yet to start operating.

Nevertheless, the most notable development was that the new cotton crop phutti (seed cotton) was traded between Rs4,000-4,100 per 40kg.

According to reports coming from cotton fields, many growers are now switching over to corn and rice owing to falling yield of cotton due to poor quality seeds, heavy rain fall and inclement weather.

On the global front cotton prices generally remained under pressure with New York cotton closing lower for all future contracts on reports of lower exports amid US-China trade war. The Indian cotton also closed easy despite the fact that crop is short.

The Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) spot rates were firm at pre-Eid level at Rs8,800 per maund.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2019