KARACHI: Strong buying from leading textile spinners pushed cotton prices higher on Friday. Fear of short crop forced textile spinners to indulge in panic buying which moved prices higher — at one stage to Rs8,900 per maund — on ready buying.

The private sector places current cotton crop size at around 11 million bales. This means that around 3.5-4m bales would have to be imported.

According to brokers, since there is a restriction of cotton imports from India, most of the shipments would be from far away countries like Brazil, US or some African countries requiring long time stretching over months.

Nevertheless, many leading textile groups have already booked around 1.1m bales for imports.

On the global front, New York cotton remained under pressure despite the fact that export figures were very encouraging showing 83 per cent growth over preceding week. The expected bumper cotton crop by US and India kept prices under pressure.

The Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) spot rates were raised by Rs50 to Rs8,650 per maund.

The following deals were reported to have changed hands on ready counter: 1,200 bales, station Saleh Pat, at Rs8,800; 1,600 bales, Rohri, at Rs8,650-8,750; 1,600 bales, Khairpur, at Rs8,700-8,800; 1,400 bales, Haroonabad, at Rs8,800-8,850; 1,200 bales, Rajanpur, at Rs8,800-8,850; 200 bales, Bahawalnagar, at Rs8,800; 400 bales, Dharanwala, at Rs8,800; 600 bales, Marot, at Rs8,800; 600 bales, Ghaziabad, at Rs8,700; and 800 bales, Vehari, at Rs8,650-8,700.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2019