KARACHI, Oct 31: Brisk trading was again witnessed on the cotton market on Thursday as spinners and mills continued to make panic buying at the falling prices.

Just in the wake of overnight ready offtake of 20,000 bales, spinners were not inclined to miss the falling market apparently weighed down by larger arrivals of phutti into the ginneries.

Although prices of phutti have declined by Rs50 to 70 per 40-kg during the last couple of sessions, growers are not inclined to hold back stocks fearing further decline.

“The ginneries are virtually flooded with phutti as growers are dumping the commodity fearing further decline in prices”, brokers said adding which in turn “has depressed prices modestly from the recent peak levels.

The initial speculation about a short crop owing to pest attack in some areas of the Punjab cotton belt are said to be incorrect as a sharp increase in the pace of arrivals of phutti indicates that the crop is normal at the growers’ level, they added.

The official arrival figures for the fortnight ended Oct 31, to be released by the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) during the next couple days will give an idea of the total crop, market sources said adding “the forward price outlook will be guided by them”.

The bulk of the support, however, remained confined to the southern Punjab lint owing to quality considerations where spinners and mills are building long-positions to cover their forward sales of cotton yarn of higher counts.

But the interesting feature is that despite most of the big-deal business ranging from 1,000 bales to 3,000 bales, ruling prices remained stable and did not show correspondence increase. This reflects growing fear among the ginners about the future price outlook.

Owing to modest fall in physical trading, the official spot rates were also lowered by 15 paisa per maund at Rs2,085.

New York cotton futures though did not show sharp decline remained under pressure on speculative selling and were marked fractionally down by 0.12 and 0.4 cents per lb at 46.10 and 48.18 cents for both the ruling December and the distant March contracts respectively.

Ready offtake was fairly active as till late in the evening about 15,000 bales changed hands per maund excluding 15 per cent sales tax, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH VARIETY: 200 bales, Mirpurkhas at Rs2,000, 300 bales, at Rs1,975, 200 bales, Tando Adam at Rs1,970, 400 bales, at Rs1,975 and 200 bales at Rs1,985, 600 bales, Jhole at Rs1,975, 1,000 bales, Nawabshah at Rs2,075, 200 bales, Sultanabad at Rs2,000, 200 bales, Sanghar at Rs2,025 and 200 bales, Shahdadpur at Rs2,025.