KARACHI, Feb 18: Cotton market on Wednesday lacked normal trading interest as ginners raised their asking prices in the backdrop of lower arrival figures of phutti into the ginneries.

But spinners and mills were not inclined to go beyond their export parity levels and mostly played safe hoping some positive developments on the world cotton front, brokers said.

But further increase in New York cotton futures despite higher US crop estimate of about a million bales above 18m bales sent shock waves among the spinners who stayed on the sidelines most of the time, they said.

The unsold stock of about 1.5m bales lying with the ginners though are on the higher side as compared to last year's total, if viewed in the backdrop of overall crop shortfall they are on the lower side of the mill annual demand.

A crisis-like situation is developing on the cotton front as spinners are sandwiched between the higher world lint prices and a short local crop, market sources said. "What impact the short crop would have on the total textile exports will be known during the next couple of months."

But cotton analysts said in a highly competitive world, it is not that easy for textile market to remain competitive when the inputs including raw materials are terribly higher.

The textile sector will need 12m bales plus to meet its annual consumption demand but the total crop may not touch the higher mark of 9.7m bales. How the big gap of 2m bales will be bridged through expensive import is not that easy to meet, market sources said.

Although some of the spinners needing immediate supplies were in the market but there was no matching selling from the ginners and as a result physical trading remained at a low ebb.

Meanwhile, reports coming from the local wholesale yarn market indicate that prices are stable but offtake of the end-product users is far below their daily intake in normal crop season, dealers said.

Official spot rates were, therefore, firmly held at the last levels in the absence of price indicators from the ready section. New York cotton futures on the other hand posted gains ranging from 0.83 to 0.85 cents per lb for both the ruling May and the maturing March settlements at 69.01 and 67.20 cents per lb respectively.

Ready offtake was light at 2,000 bales as under: 200 bales, Shahdadpur at Rs2,810, 200 bales and 600 bales, Haroonabad at Rs3,275.