Due to Eid-ul-Azha holidays from Tuesday to Thursday this week followed by an approaching weekend, cotton business was scant this weekend which will hopefully start regularly next week. However, in a slow cotton session which started on Friday, lint prices reportedly remained steady. Generally speaking, lint prices ranged from Rs.8200 to Rs.8400 per maund (37.32 Kgs), according to the quality.
When business session started on Friday after the holidays, most time of the traders was spent on bestowing Eid greetings on each other. Volume of business was small. Although it will take a few more days for the cotton economy to gain full time activity, arrivals of seed cotton are said to be increasing and a few ginning factories have already started to press cotton bales.
On Friday, the seed cotton (Kapas/Phutti) rates in Sindh are said to have ranged from Rs.3700 to Rs.3800 per 40 Kgs, while in the Punjab the seed cotton rates also reportedly ranged from Rs.3700 to Rs.3800 per 40 kilogrammes.
Lint prices were said to have remained steady. Thus on Friday the lint prices in Sindh are said to have ranged from Rs.8200 to Rs.8250 per maund (37.32 Kgs) on ex-gin basis, while in the Punjab they reportedly ranged from RS.8300 to Rs.8400 per maund. The current crop size (August 2018/July 2019) is being projected from 11.5 to 12 million bales (155 Kgs) on an ex-gin basis. A sale of 1400 bales from Shahdadpur in Sindh was reported at Rs.8250 per maund.
Textile mills are generally believed to be doing well though this week the business is said to have been moderate. Global cotton prices are believed to be steady.
Last Friday Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) became the Prime Minister of Pakistan remarkably defeating the traditional party candidate Shahbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (N). Imran Khan, the 22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan, has promised to pull out Pakistan from various economic crises which the country is presently facing.
On the global economic and financial front, the prime attention and limelight is being cast on President Donald Trump. Generally, on many counts the American economy, as well as the economies of United Kingdom, Germany and some components of the European Union (EU) are faring well.
Nevertheless, several other countries like Russia, Mexico, Turkey, Venezuela, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and even China, including some others are believed to be tottering. Therefore, from the very beginning of the present calendar year (2018) several noted analysts and economists are predicting that the leading equity markets around the world have become top-heavy and are likely to crash in the not too distant future.
The other prime news of global concern relates to the possibility of the impeachment of President Donald Trump. The probability of impeachment of President Trump is now being taken more seriously following the conviction of Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort coupled with a guilty plea by his former attorney Michael Cohen.
The latest turn in this course of events which push up the possibility of the impeachment of President Trump to become worrisome are the warnings of Trump where he has warned his nation that "the economic consequences" of his impeachment would be dire.
The speculative talk of President Trump's impeachment has gone viral, more so if the Democratic Party performs better in the forthcoming congressional elections scheduled for November, 2018.
President Donald Trump has been reported to have told the Fox news network that "if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor".
In other news concerning the global economy, China has not been cowed down by American threats to impose more tariffs on China. Indeed the finance minister of China, Liu Kun has said that China would respond "resolutely" to any "unreasonable" measures. On Thursday, America imposed a second wave of tariffs on Chinese goods worth Dollars 16 billion against which China responded in kind immediately.
Anyhow, despite all these fears, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell claimed that the fundamentals of the American economic expansion look strong which support the case for continued gradual interest rate increases.
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