KARACHI, Dec 8: After hectic activity during the last couple of weeks, the physical business on the cotton market slowed down on Friday as leading buyers took a technical breather to have an overview of their inventories.

But some leading floor brokers attributed the sluggish trading to price hike by the ginners, which was said to be well above the export parity levels of spinners and exporters.

Although textile sector has to go a long way to cover their forward positions against foreign sales, it is not inclined to go beyond their parity level, which comes to around Rs2,600 per maund, they said.

Spinners and mills have been active buyers around Rs2,600 or below depending on the quality of lint but the talk of beyond these levels forced them to keep to the sidelines, they added.

The market sources said the low ready turnover was because of the fact that most of the trading centres in the Punjab cotton belt remain closed due to weekly holiday on Friday.

They predicted that trading would be normal from Saturday and indications were that the pent-up demand could push prices modestly higher as spinners may not extend the technical breather.

However, lint prices may rise from the current levels in sympathy with phutti rates as leading growers were holding on to their unsold stocks to sell them at further higher rates, they added.

“The market is now in the tight grip of growers, leading among them are eyeing the rate of Rs1,400 per 40 kg and may go for it to cover their higher costs of inputs,” local brokers said.As a result, lint prices and official spot rates were quoted around the previous levels, although fine lots were traded higher.

New York cotton futures on the other suffered modest decline of 0.28 and 0.20 cents at 53.06 and 54.35 cents per lb for both the ruling March and the newcomer May settlements respectively.

Unlike the previous sessions, trading volume was light totalling about 10,000 bales as under:

SINDH TYPE: 1,000 bales, Sanghar at Rs2,400-2,510 and 400 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs2,460.