Nov 15 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures crawled higher on
Thursday ahead of a weekly export sales report from the U.S.
government on expectations of encouraging data.
Cotton contracts for March settled up 0.19 cent, or
0.28 percent, at 68.84 cents per lb. It traded within a range of
68.62 and 68.9 cents a lb.
"Demand (for cotton) remains strong and another good round
of exports similar to last week is expected," said Jim Lambert,
director of sales at FCStone Merchant Services.
The market awaited weekly export sales data from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture due on Thursday.
Meanwhile, top producer India's cotton production in 2017/18
is likely to rise 11.2 percent from a year ago to 37.5 million
bales because of an expanded crop area, a leading trade body
said.
Total futures market volume fell by 12,317 to 31,806 lots.
Data showed total open interest fell 2,191 to 226,636 contracts
in the previous session.
Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of
Nov. 14 totaled 48,128 480-lb bales, unchanged from 48,128 in
the previous session.
The dollar index was down 0.03 percent. The Thomson
Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index , which tracks 19
commodities, was down 0.22 percent.

(Reporting by Nithin Prasad in Bengaluru)