KARACHI, March 13: Trading activity on the cotton market on Tuesday remained at a low ebb as spinners and mills kept to the sidelines most of the time awaiting fresh developments on the cotton front.

After having imported over half a million bales, spinners were not inclined to go all-out for the unsold stock lying with the ginners and were playing safe, floor brokers said.

But market sources said the import figure was not supported by the official total and it could be well above half a million in addition to those shipments which are in the pipelines.

According to sources the textile sector may need about 2m bales to meet their annual consumption needs to make up the local crop shortfall.

Spinners’ strategy to buy at the decline and stay away at the rise was working well as far as keeping prices within their export parity levels,” floor brokers said, adding “the ginners, notably who hold larger unsold stock are a bit worried but holding on to their positions”.

The ginners’ perception was that prices could rise further higher from the current level based on supply and demand factors but steady arrivals of the imported stuff did not allow them to have an upper hand as far as price outlook was concerned, they added.

However, ginners were holding on to their unsold positions of fine lint, while were selling the inferior stuff around Rs2,500 or below it, which spinners say is also expensive.

Official spot rates, therefore, did not show change in the absence of positive feedback from the ready section and were held unchanged at Rs2,550 per maund.

New York cotton futures on the other hand lacked normal trading interest and were quoted fractionally higher by 0.06 cents per lb for the newcomer May but eased 0.01 cent for the forward July contract at 54.56 and 55.20 cents per lb respectively.