KARACHI, Feb 7: The cotton market on Thursday lacked normal trading interest as leading buyers remained conspicuous by their absence for no apparent reason on the supply front.

But some brokers said the prevailing tension in the city owing to Wednesday’s killing of a political leader was one of the chief factors behind the slowdown.

Moreover, imported consignments are steadily arriving in from various sources and spinners and mills appear to have no worries about the supplies or higher prices, market sources said.

That was perhaps why some of the big lots that changed hands were from the southern Punjab cotton belt for delivery during the next couple of days, they added.

However, a wider difference in the selling price reflects that a section of ginners still holding a handsome number of lots of inferior varieties is trying to sell at or below Rs3,100 per maund to clear their backlog, they said.

The ginners who are holding on to their large unsold stock are in no mood to lower their asking prices at this stage as they think a rebound is overdue.

They said the current improvement in the New York cotton futures indicated that prices might rise to well above the 70-cent per lb mark during the next couple of weeks as global supplies were said to be well below the annual consumption needs owing to a short crop major producer countries including Pakistan.

The New York ruling May contract on Thursday was quoted higher by 0.63 cents per lb at 70.56, while the maturing March settled at 68.67, up by 0.57 cents.

Official spot rates were, therefore, firmly held at the last level of Rs3,150 per maund and Rs3,426 per 50 kg.

The mill ready off-take was on the lower side totalling about 5,000 bales as under: 2,400 bales, Sadiqabad at Rs3,300, 2,000 bales, Rahimyar Khan at Rs3,075 to Rs3,100 and 200 bales, Sanghar at Rs3,100.