KARACHI, Nov 11: Trading activity on the cotton market on Saturday considerably slowed down as spinners took a technical breather to have an overview of their inventories.

“After last two weeks hectic buying, mills and spinners withdrew to the sidelines in an apparent effort to forestall feared increase in prices based on their massive buying,” says a leading floor broker adding

“There has been a loud whispering that some of the leading ginners arethinking to raise prices followed by reports of a short crop.”

The avert price war at this stage, spinners who have purchased about 0.3m bales during the last two weeks decided to “go slow,” sending signals to ginners to play safe sans speculative price flare-up, he said.

No one could deny the fact that mill buying is largely based on the lower crop ideas amid market talk that prices could rise from the current level by the next month as by that time the size of the crop will be known, market sources said.

They said the ruling prices on the open market are already well above the export parity level of the spinners and any further rise could significantly curtail their daily intake in the backdrop of falling exports of both yarn and textiles.

But some others said spinners could opt for imports, which, though are bit expensive, will be needed to bridge the supply gap owing to a short crop.

Meanwhile, private sector exporters have registered export contracts totalling 61,232 bales up to Nov 7, 2006 against which 20,000 bales have so far been physically shipped to various destinations.

Official spot rates were again held unchanged at the overnight level of Rs2,375 but fine type were traded well above them around Rs2,450 per maund.

New York cotton futures on the other hand came in for speculative selling followed by reports of falling demand from the major consumers.

Both the ruling December and the forward March contracts were marked down by 0.74 and 0.76 cents at 49.09 and 53.13 cents per lb, respectively.

Ready off-take was on the lower side, falling to 15,000 bales from the previous daily average of 30,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH TYPE: 1,000 bales, Shahdadpur at Rs2,360 to 2,375, 1,600 bales, Dadu at 2,395, and 600 bales, Shahpur Chakkar at 2,325 to 2,375.