KARACHI, Oct 20: Trading on the cotton market on Monday resumed on a steady note as spinners and mills continued to build-up long positions in the local stuff owing to unsettled conditions on the foreign trading centres.

“The falling value of the rupee against the US dollar proved a double-edged weapon for the textile industry leading to near-crisis conditions,” said a spinner, adding that imports of lint had become more expensive because of a weak rupee while exports are cheaper”.

On the export front also, the situation is not that ideal as some of the importers of Pakistani lint are not opening Letters of Credit against confirmed forward deals because of falling value of the rupee, they said.

The entire cotton trade appears to be in disarray and nobody could precisely decide how to react to the developing situation, they added.

According to market sources lint import contracts signed by a section of spinners and mills prior to the massive fall in the value of the rupee were in dispute owing to price differentials.

Although spinners need about 2m bales of foreign lint to make up the possible shortfall in the local crop but the future import outlook appears bleak because of wide swings in world prices, they said.

Meanwhile, the news from the crop front are fairly encouraging as the arrivals of phutti for the second fortnight in a row showed a fresh increase of about 0.8m bales at 3.5m bales against the comparable previous figure indicating that the crop may not be that short as was being speculated.

Official spot rates were held unchanged at Rs3,375 per maund but most of the deals in the ready section were done well above them.

Ready business was maintained on the higher side amounting to about 25,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals:

SINDH TYPE: 2,600 bales, Shahdadpur at Rs3,375 to Rs3,425, 2,200 bales, Tando Adam and 200 bales, New Saeedabad at Rs3,400, 1,600 bales, Sanghar at Rs3,375 to Rs3,400, 1,000 bales, Hyderabad at Rs3,375, 800 bales, Khipro at Rs3,385 to Rs3,400, 1,200 bales, Mirpurkhas and 2,000 bales, Nawabshah at Rs3,375 to Rs3,400 and 1,400 bales, Khairpur at Rs3,400.

PUNJAB VARIETY: 1,000 bales, each Rahimyar Khan, Rajanpur, D.G. Khan, 1,400 bales, Vehari, 600 bales, Ahmedpur East, 1,200 bales, Burewala, 800 bales Mian Channu, 100 bales, Chistian and 600 bales, Bahawalpur at Rs3,400, 1,000 bales, Chichawatni at Rs3,375 to Rs3,400 and 400 bales, Sahiwal at Rs3,350.