KARACHI, March 2: Modest trading activity was witnessed on the cotton market on Thursday as spinners continue to extend calculated support to the ginner offerings in an effort to keep prices within the current levels.

However, spinner and mill buying thrust appears to be focused on fine lots, which they need to spin higher counts of cotton yarn for foreign markets as well as for blended cloth, brokers said.

“Spinners seem to have made a point not to indulge in hasty buying beyond 10,000 bales daily, although ginners still hold long unsold positions”, ginners said, adding “in a way they are holding the price line to match their export parity levels”.

Leading ginners also seem to be in no hurry and holding on to their positions and are sellers above Rs2,500 per maund depending on the quality of lint in trade, they said.

Meanwhile, reports coming from the textile sector indicate that the outflow of export consignments is fairly steady and there are no reports of piling of stocks unlike late last year.

Local buying including forward covering purchases was on the higher side by the ancillary industry as prices of cotton yarn are said to be fairly stable in line with the lint rates, enabling exporters to plan for long term basis, brokers said.

According to official figures, private sector exporters have up to Feb 23, registered export contracts of 0.218m bales with the Export Promotion Bureau against which 0.196m bales have been physically shipped.

Official spot rates did not show any change for the third session in a row and were quoted around Rs2,525 per maund.

New York cotton futures on the other hand suffered fresh fall of 0.40 and 0.08 cents at 55.60 and 55.36 cents per lb for both the matured March and the ruling May settlements respectively.

Ready business was light totalling 7,000 bales as under: 1,000 bales, each Rahimyar Khan and Sadiqabad at Rs2,550 to Rs2,575, 2,000 bales, Chini Goth at Rs2,575 and 1,000 bales, upper Sindh at Rs2,550 to Rs2,570.