KARACHI, Jan 6: Trading activity on the cotton market on Monday remained relatively slow as both buyers and sellers kept to the sidelines apparently assessing the likely impact of higher phutti arrivals on the prevailing prices.

Leading spinners and mills kept to the sidelines anticipating hasty selling by the ginners but even weaker links among them held on to their positions and did not lower their asking prices.

Floor brokers said it may not be wise to think that ginners will lower their prices in response to higher crop idea as the next fortnight figures could be much lower than the prevailing ones.

“Ginners are well-aware of the fact that both the mills and spinners have to go a long way to cover their annual consumption needs and there is no point to be shaky at this time of the season”, they added.

Market sources said even the crop figure is much higher than the official estimate, spinners will remain at the receiving-end at least during the current season if supply and demand factors are taken into consideration.

If last season’s mill consumption figure of 1.3m bales is taken as

—— benchmark, the local production may not exceed the total of about 11m bales at the higher side, they added.

“The possible supply toward the close of the season could send lint prices higher as spinners will have to rely on the local stuff because of steep increase in world prices above 50 cents per lb”, ginners said.

As a result, ginners appear to be in no hurry to get rid of higher unsold stock of over 2m bales at this time of the season, which is called mid-season.

Meanwhile, private sector exporters are a bit happy over the price flare-up on the world markets as they are getting fresh orders from their overseas trading partners from the Far East and Bangladesh.

The fact that leading among them have purchased a substantial quantity of the lint totalling 45,000 bales, indicates they have already made forward deals at competitive rates and are covering positions.

Official spot rates did not show any change and were firmly held at the weekend level but in the ready section some of the lots were sold at the lower prices depending on quality.

Ready offtake was light totalling about 10,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH TYPE: 1,400, 1,000, 800, 800 bales, Khairpur, Dharki, Gothki and Mirpur Mathelo at Rs2,150 and 1,000 bales, Sanghar at Rs1,990.