KARACHI, June 5: Cotton market on Monday finished on a firm note despite the absence of spinners and mills ahead of the federal budget which was announced later in the evening.

The market was expected to respond to the budgetary proposals including relief and taxes on Tuesday as by that time relevant quarters would have analysed the positive and negative impact on the cotton trade during the coming months.

Spinners and mills awaited some fresh relief to the textile sector aiming at pushing textile export further higher during the new fiscal in the backdrop of a short cotton crop and higher prices, brokers said.

Ginners including those who still hold an unsold stocks of about 0.110m bales also hoped some corrective measures in the new budget to offset the negative impact of higher phutti prices on the competitiveness, they added.

But some of the ginners raised their asking prices apparently having found some cue to the textile related proposals and some of the spinners fearing a post-budget price flare-up opted to buy at Rs2,600 per maund, brokers said.

Leading spinners, however, kept to the sidelines pending their buying operations to the post-budget sessions in the light of incentives to boost textile exports, market sources said.

Reports coming from the major cotton growing areas said the growth of the new crop was satisfactory and there were no reports of pest attack owing perhaps to extremely warm weather.

Meanwhile, according to official figures, private sector exporters have registered export contracts for 11,000 bales with the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) up to May 31, 2006, the total rising to 0.322m bales.

Official spot rates were firmly held unchanged at the previous level of Rs2,500 but some of the deals were done well above them.

Ready business was light totalling about 3,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals: 600 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs2,600 and 1,000 bales, Samandri at Rs2,625.