Trading activity improves despite ginners' strike RECORDER REPORT

karachi  (january 20, 2011) : mills showed fresh buying interest on the cotton market on wednesday though the ginners strike continued against levy of withholding tax on farm commodities, including cotton, dealers said. the karachi cotton association (kca) spot rate was unchanged at rs 9,900, they said.
phutti prices are not available as ginners are not buying the same commodity from the growers, they said. in ready business nearly 12000 bales of cotton changed hand between rs 9,600-10,200, they added. they said that mills accelerated purchasing to meet the near term needs and rising fears about further increase in the rates of cotton as ginners are sidelines these days and other grain markets also stopped their business. several mills were active but some of them did buying despite the high prices on market anticipating that if ginners' strike prolonged, they would have to face shortage of commodity or they would have to pay higher prices, they said.
market sources said that if the government withdraws the newly-introduced tax, trading activity may resume as usual. other analysts said that despite bumper crop in india, exporters were not showing interest in the exports, instead, india is taking steps to save its textile industry. in the meantime, recently, it announced to exports cotton, they added.
leading consumers pakistan and china expect that india will announce more exports ofcotton due to lucrative profits, they said. bad weather in china and pakistan forced both countries to import cotton to meet the local consumption requirements, they added. reports coming in from the international markets, indicate that the lint prices would maintain surge due to slow supply but demand is still on surge by the consumers.
country still needs to imports some 2.8 million bales of cotton to meet the domestic requirements, some deals are in pipeline to import cotton, they said. according to the pakistan cotton ginners association (pcga) fortnightly report till january 15, 2011, approximately 10.76 million bales reached the ginneries against the last year's figure at 12.23 million bales.
on tuesday the us cotton futures finished up the daily limit on light investor buying as the weak dollar and strong grains complex boosted fiber contracts as the market stayed within sight of its record highs, analysts said. the cotton market was shut on monday to honour us civil rights leader martin luther king jr. the key march cotton contract on ice futures us climbed the 4.00 cent limit to settle at $1.4544 per lb, with the session low at $1.4247. volume traded was around 9,300 lots, about 50 percent below the 30-day norm, thomson reuters preliminary data showed.

(Source: http://www.brecorder.com/news/cotton-and-textiles/pakistan/1145357:trading-activity-improves-despite-ginners-strike.html?hl=cotton)