KARACHI, Jan 5: Trading activity on the cotton market on Friday remained cheerless as spinners were still in the process of formulating their new year buying operations. “I think despite larger forward import deals, the trading is expected to get normal by the next week as delivery problems may not have any relevance to the higher freight rates,” says a leading broker.

Pent-up demand is already here as a number of spinners and mills have placed fresh buy orders with the brokers for immediate supplies during the next week.

However, it is unclear whether or not lint prices would rise in the process as much will depend on the quality of lint to be involved in trading.

But spinner preference for the upper Sindh and southern Punjab lint will be further reinforced as leading mills have fresh export orders for both higher counts of cotton yarn and cloth, brokers said.

Some of the foreign importers also signed forward deals for the import of blended cloth for the next summer and as a result prices of polyester fibre have risen modestly during the last couple of days, they added.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) has released phutti arrival figures for the fortnight ended Dec 31, 2006 at 10.824m bales as compared to previous year’s 10.267m bales, showing a decline of 0.172m bales. Spinners purchased about 9m bales, leaving an unsold stock of about 2m bales.

But the lower arrivals did not have any positive impact on the prevailing prices for the short-term.

Official spot rate were again held unchanged at the previous level of Rs2,500 but dull activity was witnessed in the ready section.