KARACHI: Cotton prices continued to rise for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday. Short supply of cotton owing to slow arrival of phutti (seed cotton) is keeping prices highly volatile.
Presently a crisis like situation is being faced by all stakeholders in cotton trade starting from growers, ginners, brokers and spinners.
The cotton crop from the sowing stage had been victim of harsh weather and shortage of irrigation water, particularly in lower Sindh where early sowing is done and spinners start procuring supplies from June. However, it did not happen this season and the crop has been delayed which has been causing acute shortage of cotton. The demand and supply imbalance has pushed cotton prices higher.
Ginners are presently extremely disturbed over rapidly rising phutti prices as this threatens their viability. Another meeting was held in Tando Adam in order to reach to a framework so that phutti prices could be controlled.