KARACHI, July 26: Cotton market on Friday maintained a firm trend as higher bids received by the TCP against its local and foreign tenders boosted local prices by Rs50 per maund.

“Reports that the Trading Corporation of Pakistan has accepted a local bid from a spinner for 4,000 bales at Rs2,000 for a grade 2 encouraged ginners to raise their asking prices”, a leading local cotton consultant Naseem Usman said.

He said as the local unsold stocks, both with the TCP and the ginners are not more than about 90,000 bales, fears of short supply among the spinners during the next month worry them.

The mill monthly intake is currently billed at 0.825m bales and despite larger imports of 1.2m bales, most of the spinners are claimed to be still short of their annual consumption requirements.

“Lint prices may hit new seasonal peak level before the new crop from the lower Sindh ginneries filling the possible supply gap”, most floor brokers predict “supply and demand factors are already at work and further sales by the TCP could accentuate the supply position”.

According to market sources the TCP high-ups have also advised the bidders of grade-3 lint to further improve their bids and indicated to accept all of them at Rs1,950 per 40 kg.

Similarly, it has already accepted a bid for 1,000 bales at 38 cents per lb for 1-1/16 type of lint from a foreign buyer and has asked the other to raise their bids to 37.75 and 38.75 cents per lb. The total bales of the two varieties billed at 50,000 and 16,000 bales respectively.

The physical activity on the ready market has considerably slowed down since the TCP resumed local as well foreign sales as spinners prefer to buy from it because of quality considerations.

Official spot rates were firmly held unchanged at the last level of Rs1,875 per maund, while New York cotton futures resisted fresh decline after last two sessions’ persistent speculative selling and recovered to close higher by 0.4 and 0.1 cent per lb at 45.94 and 47.55 cents per lb for both the ruling October and the distant December settlements respectively.

Ready offtake was light as till late in the evening about 500 bales of new crop changed hands as under: 100 bales, Pithoro at Rs1,940 and 200 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs1,950.