KARACHI, Oct 5: Cotton market on Saturday passed through a relatively dull session as spinners kept to the sidelines awaiting further developments on the world cotton trading centres.

The steep decline in New York cotton futures over the last two sessions has altogether changed the world cotton price outlook and spinners have decided to stay away apparently to assess the negative impact of falling world prices on the local one, dealers said.

Over the last two sessions, New York cotton futures have received massive battering on strong speculative selling as both the contracts have fallen by limit-fall.

The maturing October and the ruling December settlements on Friday were marked down by 1.95 and 1.82 cents per lb at 40.60 and 42.44 cents per lb respectively.

“The breach of the 40-cent per lb barrier could have a significant negative impact on the local prices and spinners and mills are apparently awaiting this to happen”, one broker said.

He said an unexpected reversal of the New York cotton futures has jolted the world markets and the local market could hardly be an exception if the decline was further extended.

One thing now appears certain that spinners will restrain the daily buying from the local market to ascertain “whether or not imports of lint are more competitive than the local stuff”, market sources said.

The weekend sluggishness reflects this thinking as most of the leading brokers did not report any deal in the Sindh variety till late in the evening.

For the first time during the current season, the buyers just bid but did not finalize any deal on the local market postponing their buying operations until next week.

However, reports coming from the Punjab cotton belt indicate that some of the spinners purchased about 4,000 bales late on Friday evening, details of which are expected to be sent to the KCA by Monday.

The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA), maiden arrival figures of phutti for the current season for the fortnight ended Sept 30, 2002, shows a modest increase of 2.5 per cent over the comparable figure last year but it did not affect the prices.

The official spot rates did not show any change and were quoted at the overnight level for the second day in a row.

Ready offtake was light totalling about 4,000 bales, all from the central and the southern Punjab ginneries, the higher prices being Rs2,000 per maund and lower Rs1,950 depending on quality.