Weekly Report: Reserve Trade Suspended before Spring Festival

Spring Festival holiday approaches, reserve purchase and release suspended for textiles, mills and cotton companies send their employees back home for holiday, cotton trade is hardly seen in the cotton market.
Last week (20th-24th January), reserve purchase and release were suspended. CC Index 3128B settled at 19,419 Yuan per ton, 32 Yuan up over the week. Seed cotton available in market reduced largely due to holiday, and ginners in Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Tianjin and Shanxi provinces had stopped seed cotton buying according to survey by CCA cotton processing industry branch. Buying price in Yellow River region for 3128 equivalent was 8.28 Yuan per kilo, 0.09 Yuan down over the week, 8.58 Yuan per kilo in Yangtze region, 0.04 Yuan up over the week.
Since 23rd January, reserve purchase and release business suspended. The release auction would restore on 7th February, and reserve purchase and warehouse delivery inspection would restart on 17th February. Last week, reserve purchased 74,000 ton of cotton. By 22nd January, reserve cotton purchase for 2013/14 season totaled 5,615,520 ton, comprising by 2,072,200 ton from Xinjiang, 1,729,950 ton from inland and 1,813,370 ton via large contracts by key enterprises. The reserve cotton release of the past week also reduced to 23,000 ton. By 22nd January, reserve cotton release offered 1,061,230 ton for auction and 403,950 ton was sold, achieving transaction percentage of 38.1%, including 335,760 ton of domestic cotton by transaction rate of 33.8% and 68,190 ton of import cotton by transaction rate of 98.9%.
Last week, the import cotton FC Index settled at 98.29 cent/lb., 1.44 cent up from last week.