KARACHI, Feb 6: Trading on the cotton market on Wednesday remained insipid as spinners and mills played safe in the backdrop of steady arrivals of phutti into the ginneries.

The fact that the total arrivals of phutti have so far crossed the 10m bales mark despite analyst predictions of below this total has raised hope that the total could be 11m bales plus.

Floor brokers said with two or odd months still to go before the end of the current arrival phase, there could be many pleasant surprises during the next couple of weeks, notably during the next month.

“Higher the local crop lower the imports, which in turn will mean a lot of saving in the foreign exchange,” said a spinner adding “even a million bales increase in the total crop could change the entire future price outlook.”

As a result, some of the ginners holding onto long unsold positions for a better price owing to reports of a short crop tried to liquidate in part their long positions fearing further decline in prices, market sources said.

An idea of the fall in the ginner selling prices may well be had from the fact that some of the inferior lots were traded as lower as Rs3,100 per maund from the previous average rate of Rs3.200 or slightly higher, they said.

There was, however, no change in the official spot rates, which were firmly held at Rs3.150 for an average quality lots.

Mills ready off-take was relatively higher, which also had some big lots, including 8,000 bales, from the Rahimyar Khan ginneries at Rs3,000 to 3,325 depending on the quality, and 1,000 bales, Shahdadpur at 3,100, 300 bales, Sadiqabad and 400 bales, Khanpur at 3,300.