KARACHI, Dec 20: Trading on the cotton market on Saturday failed to pick up as spinners and mills remained conspicuous by their absence owing to delivery problems.

Floor brokers said owing to persistent winter rain in the entire cotton belt, ginning operations remained virtually suspended as the heaps of phutti (seedcotton) on the open plinths in the ginneries got wet leading to suspension of operations.

They said some of the ginners where the rainfall was not that heavy are expected to resume operations by tomorrow adding to the falling unsold inventories.

Spinners and mills are also reluctant to make fresh deals at least for the near-term as pressed bales lying in the open were also wet and could significantly add to the weight, and in some cases also damage the quality of lint, which gets contaminated because of rain water, they added.

Cotton analyst Naseem Usman said the market would take a couple of days more to get normal but said despite strong presence of the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP)as second buyer, growers may not get the price benefit.

According to TCP sources, it has so far purchased 0.147m bales of varieties up to Dec 15, 91,000 bales from the Punjab ginners and 55,000 bales from Sindh.

Meanwhile, official crop figures of around 9.1m bales showed a consecutive increase over the corresponding figures a year ago but point to a lower crop even at revised total of 12.5m bales.

But fresh increase in prices would largely depend on the picking up of textile exports during the new year as leading foreign importers have not yet opened letters of credit for the new year consumption needs, dealers said.

Official spot rates were firmly held at the overnight level of Rs2,850 per maund in rupees.

But on the other hand, New York cotton futures resisted fresh fall on revival of speculative support and were quoted around the overnight level of 45.23 and 45.88 for the ruling March and the forward May contracts, respectively.

Mills ready off-take fell to a modest total of about 2,000 bales as under: 400 bales, Dadu at Rs2,765, 400 bales, Rasulabad at 2,750, 200 bales, Pethero at 2,725 and 400 bales, Rahimyar Khan at 2,900.