KARACHI, April 7: Cotton market on Friday consolidated the overnight gains as spinners and mills remained active buyers at the current levels and again lifted substantial quantities below Rs2,500 per maund.

“I foresee a price war among the spinners and mills to grab the floating stock of fine lots,” predicts a leading broker, adding “ginners could be the chief beneficiaries in the fight of the bulls”.

For the second session in a row, spinners did not left the arena and continued to make fresh short-covering below Rs2,500 per maund level but leading ginners who still hold the bulk of the unsold stock appeared to be reluctant sellers, they added.

There is no report of fresh tender from the TCP, owing to unstable world rates, which could have some price implications in relation local sales. Moreover, the details about the second tender and the sale figures are not available in the market.

The return of spinners to the local market was natural as they need lint stocks to cover their forward sales of cotton yarn for the last quarter of the current fiscal ending June 30, 2006.

Brokers said indications are that the market could witness a lot of heating up in the coming sessions as pressure on supplies may cause fresh increase in prices, notably for fine lots.

But spinners and mills did not wait for fresh TCP tender and resumed local buying from the ginners in the open market.

It was in this background that official spot rates were firmly held at the overnight levels, although some of the deals were done well above them.

New York cotton futures on the other hand failed to sustain the previous gains and fell by 0.32 and 0.19 cents at 53.64 and 55.45 cents per lb for both the ruling May and forward July settlements respectively on late speculative selling.

Ready off-take was active as about 10,000 bales including some big-lot changed hands as under: 2,000 bales, upper Sindh at Rs2,450, 400 bales, Kot Lalu at Rs2,400, 3,000 bales, Sadiqabad at Rs2,435, 2,000 bales, Khanpur and 1,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs2,475.