As the holiday mood prevailed in world cotton markets, the local market have also come under the grip of general lethargy, slowing down business deals to a very low level, brokers added.

Due to Christmas and New Year holidays trading activity has slowed down in world leading cotton markets, this has also reflected on domestic market. Ahead of bank closing, ginners were reluctant to enter into big deals fearing long delay in payments against their deals Keeping trading activity considerable slow on Monday at cotton market in Pakistan.

Reports coming from cotton fields indicate that very little cotton has been left for picking and around 90 to 95 percent has already reached ginning factories. This strongly indicated that current cotton season would end much earlier.

Moreover, leading spinning groups have now diverted their buying towards Indian cotton and currently booking was going on at full swing, brokers maintained.

As per dealers, the official spot rate remain unchanged at Rs 6250. In Sindh, seed cotton prices were at Rs 2600-3250 while that in Punjab, phutti rates were at Rs 2800 and Rs 3500, as per 40 kg.

In the ready session, around 3,000 bales of cotton changed hands between Rs 6250-6500.

According to the market sources, one of the leading factors behind the lacklustre business is cotton imports from Indian, slow down in arrivals of quality cotton, holidays in the globe and local bank closing.

The following major deals reported on the ready counter were : 600 bales of cotton from Rohri at Rs 6250, 1200 bales from Dharanwala at Rs 6300 and 1000 bales from Sadiqabad at Rs 6450-6500.