KARACHI, Dec 13: Trading activity on the cotton market showed a slight improvement on Saturday as a section of the spinners resumed covering operations against their forward sales of textiles.

There was, however, a slight change in the ruling prices as compared to pre-Eid holiday trading sessions owing to absence of leading ginners from the active market for no apparent reasons, floor brokers said.

Although official spot rates were revised downward by Rs50 per maund at Rs2,900, in physical trading, most of the deals were quality-based, they added.

While lint from the central Sindh cotton belt was available around Rs2,700 per maund, fine varieties in the Punjab cotton belt were traded at an average rate of Rs2,900 per maund.

Textile sources said export outlook appears to be a bit bearish because of the prevailing recession in the US and the European markets, and the higher local prices are taking away our competitive edge in our traditional export outlets.

The other destabilising factor on the export front was highly erratic price movements on the New York cotton future market, which had a negative impact on the world cotton trade, they said.

As a result, our traditional partners were not inclined to sign forward import deals for a long period and prefer short-term shipment options, they added.

After last couple of sessions sustained run-up, New York cotton futures on Friday came in for speculative selling and were quoted lower by 1.03 and 0.67 cents per lb at 43.43 and 44.12 for both the ruling March and the forward May contracts, respectively.

The following were some of the deals in rupees per maund in the ready section late on Saturday evening:

SINDH TYPE: 200 bales, each Mirpurkhas and Hala at Rs2,700.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 2,500 bales, DG Khan, 200 bales, Alipur and 100 bales, Bahawalnagar at Rs2,900.