KARACHI, June 20: Cotton market on Tuesday lacked normal trading interest as leading ginners again kept to the sidelines but some others lifted stray lots of low-mic from the central Sindh ginneries at rates in line with the quality premiums.

Floor brokers said some of the ginners both from the central Sindh and Punjab cotton belts still holding odd lots were active sellers mostly at the spinner price option as they were inclined to clear the backlog.

Some of the brokers reported stray inter-mill deals as some of the leading spinners offered their modest surplus of lint to their needy counterparts that would be returned in kind after the new crop arrival.

But those holding an unsold stock of fine lots from the southern Punjab and upper Sindh ginneries were holding onto their stocks in an apparent effort to sell them around Rs2,700 per maund, the level which spinners were not inclined to touch at this stage owing to some technical reasons, they said

“We certainly need more lint to cover our forward sales of both cloth and yarn but at a competitive rate,” says a leading spinner, adding “we will revert to them after the TCP exhausts its stocks during the next couple of weeks”.However, both ginners and spinners are unsure about the future price outlook after the arrival of the new crop from the lower Sindh ginneries, although ginners did not foresee any major change in new crop price owing partly to delay in picking operations of phutti.

Meanwhile, reports coming from the spinning sector indicate that the bulk of physical shipments deadlines for the quarter ending June 30, has been met and export priorities for the new fiscal are being chalked out.

Official spot rates were again quoted unchanged at the last levels but some of the deals done in the ready section were finalised at modestly higher rates.

New York cotton futures on the other hand suffered fall of 1.17 and 0.93 cents per lb for both the maturing July and new crop October contracts at 50.90 and 60 cents respectively.

Ready business was light totalling about 2,500 bales both from the Sindh and Punjab ginneries, sans fine lots which did not change hands because of higher asking prices by the ginners.