KARACHI, Oct 17: The cotton prices on Friday suffered sharp fall on panic-selling by ginners followed by reports of steady arrivals of phutti into the ginneries and problems on the textile export front owing to turmoil on the world markets.

“The falling value of the rupee has disrupted the export trade as spinners and mills could not precisely decide how to stay in the export trade in the changing world financial sector,” said a leading spinner.

Over the last few days the lint prices suffered a fall in order of Rs150 to Rs450 per maund depending on the quality.

Spinners having some problems on the export front, however, lifted all the lots offered for sale by ginners.

An idea of panic-selling may well be had from the fact that some of the deals in the ready section were done as low as at Rs3,100 per maund as some of the ginners holding long positions were trying to get out of the market as early as possible.

The interesting feature was that smart rebound staged by the New York cotton futures after several lean sessions, failed to boost the ginner morale here and they followed the developments on the international export markets, floor brokers said.

“In view of the supply and demand factors, local prices may not fall further,” said a broker and predicted,” they could rebound after the current negative fallout of the world markets is over”.

The local official rates were revised downward by Rs75 per maund but in physical trading most of the deals were done sharply lower, the lowest being Rs3,100 per maund in Sindh type.

But New York cotton futures on the other hand rose by 2.03 and 1.51 cents at 49.57 and 53.39 cents per lb for both the ruling December and the forward March contracts respectively.

Mill ready off-take was on the higher side totalling about 20,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals.

SINDH TYPE: 1,000 bales, each Mirpurkhas, Tando Adam and Shahdadpur at Rs3,250 to Rs3,300, 800 bales, Sultanabad at Rs3,100 to Rs3,200 and 500 bales, Khipro at Rs3,250.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 2,000 bales, each Mian Channu and Burewala at Rs3,250 to Rs3,350, 1,000 bales, each Rajanpur and Fazalpur at Rs3,350, 1,400 bales, Khanewal at and 600 bales, Rahimyar Khan and 200 bales, each Fort Abbas and Pak Pattan at Rs3,400, 1,000 bales, Gaggon at Rs3,300 to Rs3,325, 600 bales, each Vehari and Layyah at Rs3,290 to Rs3,325, 400 bales each and 200 bales, Muridwala, Gojra and Mongi Bungalow at Rs3,280, 400 bales, Mamu Kanjan at Rs3,300, 400 bales, Chichawatni at Rs3,325, 400 bales each and 200 bales each, Haroonabad, Arifwala, Chistian and Pir Mahal at Rs3,350.