April 16 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures inched down after hitting a five-week high as the market awaited more clarity on weather forecasts with the beginning of planting season in major producing countries India, China and the United States.
* ICE cotton contract for July expiry CTN8 settled down 0.13 cent, or 0.16 percent, at 83.22 cents per lb.
* It traded within a range of 83.04 and 83.94 cents a lb, the highest since March 13.
* "Planting is now beginning in the major global producers, but so far the weather forecasts are about average, which is why prices have been somewhat stable," said Gabriel Crivorot, an analyst at Societe Generale (PA:SOGN) in New York.
* "Weather and planting will be the major driver of prices for the next months, but we do not have much to go by as of now, which is why the market is muted."
* India is likely to receive average monsoon rains in 2018, the weather office said, raising the possibility of higher farm and economic growth in Asia's third-biggest economy, where half of the farmland lacks irrigation. Speculators raised their net long position in cotton by 1,144 contracts to 77,382 contracts, in the week to April 10, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed on Friday. CFTC/
* Total futures market volume fell by 21,595 to 37,480 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 5,240 to 272,052 contracts in the previous session.
* Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as of April 13 totaled 67,863 480-lb bales, down from 67,864 in the previous session.
* China sold 11,800 tonnes of cotton at an auction of state reserves, according to cotton industry website cncotton.com on Monday.