PAKISTAN: Pakistan to import nearly 2m cotton bales

Pakistan’s deliveries reached a little over 11 million bales this week. With only 700,000 bales remaining, Pakistan will fall short of its domestic needs.

“We will need to import between 1.5 million and 2 million bales more to meet demands until June, said Nasem Usman, chairman of the Karachi-based Cotton Brokers Forum. The new harvest will start pouring onto the market in July.

Pakistan textile firms have looked toward India, the world’s second-biggest producer to meet most of their demands. Supply from the eastern neighbour costs less and takes fewer days to be delivered. But supplies from India have been slower and fewer after most of the Indian traders failed to honour deals with their Pakistani buyers, citing the failure to register their export orders with Indian authorities in time.

India suspended the online process of registering cotton exports in early October after receiving applications equal to the Nov Dec 1-15, 2010 export cap of 5.5 million bales.

But they failed to ship between 1.7 million and 1.9 million bales, so the deadline was extended until Feb 25.

Many Pakistani traders said Indian exporters used the registration suspension to escape most of the deals for 1 million bales so they could book higher profits after international cotton prices rose.

Since December, Pakistani buyers have signed fresh deals with Indian buyers for at least 300,000 bales at between $ 1.40 and $ 1.50 per pound, said Yasin Saddik, vice chairman of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association. Pakistani traders said they did not expect more than 500,000 bales from India this season, and would have to buy cotton from West Africa and the United States at higher rates.