Pakistan's largest cotton spinners' body, All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), said that it had called off the shutdown on government assurances that the industry's problems would be solved.

The textile industry is opposing the government decision to allow export of 500,000 bales (of 375-lb each) of cotton from the 1998/99 (July-June) crop in addition to an earlier export allowance of 200,000 bales from the 1997/98 crop."Spinners were back in the ring buying at levels of 2,675 rupees per maund to 2,700 per maund in active trading," dealer Mahboob Siddiqui said.

He said arrivals from the new 1998/99 crop had picked up but prices were unlikely to fall next week because of high mill demand.

The official crop assessment committee last week lowered its estimate of cotton production to 10.6 million bales, from an earlier projection of 10.8million.