"The volumes have been pretty low, and both sellers and buyers are not aggressive," he said. Dealers said local traders were well covered for December and January after aggressive buying in the past few weeks and international prices were low.
They said trading volumes were likely to rise in a week or so when activity in international markets picked up after holidays.
Domestic palm oil prices have steadied in the last couple of weeks after facing pressure from forecasts of high cottonseed arrivals.
However, cottonseed supply has slowed down in recent weeks as hopes of a big cotton crop faded due to bad weather.
Earlier this year government officials predicted cotton production would hit a 15 million bale target in fiscal 2005/06, against an actual 14.8 million last year.
But Qadir Bux Baluch, cotton commissioner at Pakistan's Agriculture Ministry, told Reuters on Wednesday the crop was expected to fall as low as 12.72 billion bales due to unfavourable weather.
Dealers said local palm oil prices would not fall much in the coming weeks unless there was a major downturn in the international market.
Pakistan, the world's third largest consumer of vegetable oils, mostly imports Malaysian palm oil and olein to meet domestic demand of 1.9 million tonnes. Cottonseed covers the rest.
Dealers and analysts expect edible oil imports to increase 7.1 percent this year to 1.48 million tonnes.
On Wednesday dealers quoted palm olein at 1,560 rupees per maund.