KARACHI, March 28: Cheerless trading conditions prevailed on the cotton market on Thursday as both buyers and sellers kept to the sidelines most of the time awaiting apparently some fresh positive developments on the export front.

Stray enquiries from some local mills were reported by leading brokers but as the bid prices were claimed to be far below the asking prices of ginners, ready offtake remained at a low ebb.

However, reports coming in from the upper Sindh and southern Punjab ginneries indicate that leading group of spinners are in touch with them and are making direct purchases at a mutually agreed rate.

Floor brokers attributed the current standoff on the ready front to higher crop estimates and the perceptions of an easy supply all through the current season ending August 31.

Although spinners still need over a million bales to meet their annual consumption needs, they are not in a hurry to chase prices higher owing to larger crop, they added.

Prices of some lower counts of cotton yarn have fallen modestly on the local market, which also caused slow down in mill buying at least for the near-term.

A relative slowdown in TCP buying has further encouraged spinners to go by their own priorities rather than making panic buying and that has in a way checked speculative rise in prices, market sources said.

Some of the leading private sector exporters are in the market and covering their forward sales but their intake is too small to influence prices and that is perhaps why official spot rates are almost stable around Rs1,800 per maund, they added.

Reports coming from the southern Punjab ginneries indicate that arrivals of phutti from the growers have almost dried up and they are in the process of getting final payments from the ginners.

Ready business remained light as till late in the evening a deal for 1,400 bales from Rahimyar Khan was reported at Rs1,775.