KARACHI: The cotton market turned slow on Thursday as buyers took to the sidelines owing to short supply of quality cotton.

According to reports, the last two-day rains and gusty winds resulted in shedding of cotton flowers in lower Sindh and some parts of Punjab causing heavy losses to growers.

Naseem Usman, a cotton analyst, believes the new spell of rain is going to impact the crop size as well as its quality particularly in lower Sindh — Sanghar, Tando Adam and Hyderabad being top cotton producing areas of the province.

The ginners also stopped purchasing phutti (seed-cotton) fearing it will have much higher moisture content, which affects quality of ginned cotton.

The world leading markets closed mixed to easy with New York cotton recovering part of recent losses for all the future contracts. The Chinese market closed erratic while Indian cotton lost in the range of Rs200 to Rs500 per candy (356-kg).

The Karachi Cotton Association (KCA), however, left its spot rates unchanged at Rs8,000 per maund.

The following deals were reported to have changed hands on the ready counter: 400 bales, Shahdadpur, at Rs7,800; 1,000 bales, Khanewal, at Rs8,350; 400 bales, Shujabad, at Rs8,350; 200 bales, Rajanpur, at Rs8,300; 400 bales, Pir Mehal, at Rs8,250; 800 bales, Burewala, at Rs8,100 to Rs8,150; and 200 bales, Vehari, at Rs8,100.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2019