KARACHI, Dec 7: The cotton market on Tuesday shrugged off the recent hesitancy caused by higher arrivals of phutti into ginneries as spinners were back in the arena and resumed buying at ginners' asking prices.

The post-arrival lull in trading was finally broken as the spinners and mills, hoping a market crash followed by panic selling by the ginners in the backdrop of higher arrivals, resumed their covering operations at the higher levels, brokers said.

While the Sindh type was again neglected despite the fact that lint from the upper Sindh ginneries is of fine type, the spinners tried to the grab floating stock of fine lots from the southern Punjab ginneries at higher rates, they said.

Although leading ginners held on to their position anticipating further increase in prices above the current level of Rs1,900 per maund, some of them shed their extra load around this level.

Analysts said aggressive buying by the TCP had sent shock waves among the mills and spinners, leading among them holding short positions hastened to cover positions at the prevailing prices, fearing further increase.

An idea of TCP buying may well be had from the fact that on Dec 6, it signed contracts for 70,500 bales with the ginners from Sindh and Punjab and is maintaining its daily purchase schedule, depending on the offers from the ginners, they said.

Total purchases by the TCP so far rose to 1.651m bales, DG Khan being on the top with a tally of 0.304m bales, Multan, Haroonabad and Bahawalpur at 0.183m, 0.161m and 0.151m bales, respectively.

Official spot rates were, therefore, increased by Rs25 to Rs1,850, but in the ready section some of the deals were done well above this rate. New York cotton futures also showed modest recovery from the recent lows on revival of speculative activity as both the ruling December and forward March contracts were quoted higher by 0.55 and 0.11 cents per lb at 45.80 and 42.53 cents, respectively.

Ready offtake was relatively slow as the ginners were reluctant sellers at the prevailing rate as a result about 15,000 bales, mostly from the Punjab cotton belt changed hands, the following being some of the notable deals: 1,000 each, Khanpur, Bahawalpur, Alipur, Rajanpur and Sadiqabad at Rs1,900; 2,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan also at this rate; 1,000 bales, DG Khan and Muhammadpur Dewan at Rs1,875 to Rs1,900.