Maintaining tight trajectory

In recent sessions, lint prices have remained tight as there was good demand in cotton market. Yarn prices continue to remain firm due to sustained buying. Despite daily seedcotton arrivals, which are estimated to be lint equivalent to 100,000 bales of domestic size, maintaining good volume to lift the mills and keep cotton prices on a firm plane.
Even cotton waste prices have gone up which were hardly selling four or five weeks ago. Fear of shorter domestic cotton crop, has enhanced imported cotton business. Slow arrivals of seedcotton and controlled sale of lint by the ginners have also helped to increase the cotton prices. Good profits are being reaped in the various sectors of the cotton economy but ginners are complaining lack of parity between seedcotton and lint prices.
International trade circles estimate more than 100,000 metric tonnes of seedcotton have already been booked now to import Pakistan during the current season (August 2012 to July 2013), bulk being American high mic and G5, then Brazilian, Greek, Indian, Nigerian etc. MFS/EA 41-4-35 mic 35/53 ncl Gpt 28 ncl bzns variously concluded recently between 750 and 800 on NYK March '13 for shpts in January-February-March '13. Indian bzns being reported for J-34 at abt USC 79/lb and Shankar-6 at abt USC 82.50/lb both via Wagah route.
Local lint prices today range from Rs 5.750 (or, USC 73/lb) to Rs 6,150 per maund (37.32 Kgs) (or, USC 78/lb) in Sindh and from Rs 6,000 (or, USC 76/lb) to Rs 6,200 per maund (or, USC 79/lb) in the Punjab, according to the quality.
The expected current (2012-2013) cotton crop in Pakistan is to range from 13 to 14 million domestic size bales on an ex-gin basis against mills demand estimated to be between 14.5 to 15.5 million bales. Till now about 8.3 million bales equivalent seedcotton have arrived for the current season from which the domestic mills may lift about 6.7 million bales and the exporters about 0.15 million bales. Local volume of cotton business is good.
Prices of local cotton are quite tight and import cotton business is good, being reported. Yarn prices are also well held due to large shipments to China. As coarser counts are quite profitable to spin, a number of mills have ordered carding machines from Trutzschler and Reiter, which is expected to further increase domestic consumption in about six months or so, even without increasing spindelage. Imported cottons are mostly being used to spin medium to higher counts of yarns.
On the global economic and financial front, the situation has become gloomier and appears to have gone out of hand. All the countries on the five continents seem to have been inextricably mired in numerous problems which are getting deeper by the day. A ray of light here and there appears what may seem like a new dawn, only to be followed by more of the same: utter hopelessness.
Perched upon what is now called a "fiscal cliff", America is poised at a treacherous height from where the depth of the nether economic domain promises to be a new nadir of helpnessness. We hope and pray that the Republicans and Democrats now dramatically poised in different directions will show the desperately desired statesmanship and prevent the United States from suffering further deprivations. As it is, news are circulating that many states of America wish to opt out of the Union. The message being received is that the entire socio-economic gamut in the United States needs to reinvent itself and a simple makeover will not be sufficient.
To defray the approach to the "fiscal cliff" arriving by the beginning of January, 2013, president Obama is suggesting that higher earners should pay higher taxes across the board. Obama further indicated that earnings below Dollars 250,000 will not face increase in taxes. Since time is of essence, a quick bipartisan solution to the stalemate between Republicans and the Democrats is the need of the hour. With America's economic fortunes in the doldrums, the world at large is fearing collateral economic damage and appears to be visibly disheartened.
Global share values have kept falling over the past four weeks. Even the bond buying stimulus announced by the Federal Reserve to supplement the increased tax proposals in the USA has done little to allay the fears of the investors. In the mean time, protests in Europe against austerity programmes continue to tear the socioeconomic fabric into tatters. Sourthern Europe appears to be in particularly desperate straits.
From London to Lisbon and Germany to Greece, violent protests were held on last Wednesday when angry crowds denounced the austerity measures of the various governments in Europe. Protestors blamed the bankers and also their governments for the prevailing financial and economic mess pervading all over the Continent.
Thus the protests by tens of thousands of people was the order of the day at midweek due to falling living standards, austerity measures and record rise in unemployment. This show of resistance by the leaders of the workers unions and their followers against authority was as much prevalent in Germany, Belgium and Italy as it was in Spain, Greece and Portugal. Even the visit of Frau Merkel to Portugal earlier in the week did not pacify or placate the workers.
The fall in business confidence is not just an economic phenomenon, it refers to the drop in the lifestyle of many people in Europe and elsewhere. However, at the face of it, there appear little chances that increase in taxes and spending cuts to attempt to put a sane public spending policy, after the profligacy of the previous decades, would do much to remedy the massive misdemeanors of the past decades.
With sagging of the US retail sales, cut in the 2013 growth forecast by the Bank of England, reports by Mictsubishi MFJ, Japan's biggest bank, that profits have tumbled and the UK shares down to a two month low level, there appears little hope of an early economic revival around the globe.