KARACHI, Aug 11: Trading on the cotton market on Friday remained slow as leading spinners and mills again held to the sidelines apparently anticipating further fall in prices.

As the arrivals of phutti into the Sindh ginneries are gaining momentum owing to resumption of normal picking operations, spinners hope further decline in prices in the coming sessions, dealers said.

Spinners appeared to be in no hurry to cover forward positions against sales of textiles as leading among them had built-up long positions through steady imports from various sources and buying from the TCP.

According to market sources, spinners were eyeing the level of Rs2,400 per maund or slightly below it for the new crop to re-enter the market.

During the last couple of sessions, lint prices of new crop from Sindh dropped to Rs2,475 from Rs2,525 per maund followed by reports of larger arrivals of phutti into the ginneries, they added.

The situation in the central Punjab cotton belt where about two dozen ginning mills had resumed operations was different as spinners there were said to be lifting bulk of the new crop around Rs2,650 per maund.

Meanwhile, phutti rates in the lower Sindh were quoted around Rs1,150 to Rs1,100 per maund as growers are not inclined to sell their stocks below this rate.

Ginners were said to be reluctant buyers at this rate because of fall in selling rate of lint. However, to keep the wheels moving, they were obliging growers though on modest scale, market sources said.

Official spot rates, therefore, resisted fresh fall and were quoted unchanged at the overnight level of Rs2,475 per maund.

New York cotton futures on the other hand showed fresh modest rise of 0.30 and 0.20 cents at 55.08 and 56.86 cents per lb for both the ruling October and the forward December contracts respectively.

Ready off-take was light totalling about 1,000 bales, including 200 bales from a Tando Adam ginnery done at Rs2,475.