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KARACHI, June 15 (Reuters) Pakistani traders have booked a record 1.095 million tonnes of refined sugar since the beginning of 2006, but a domestic glut and falling prices are discouraging more buying, industry officials said on Thursday.

''Imports have been very aggressive in recent months but whether the trend continues will depend on (domestic) prices,'' said Abdul Malik, a director at the state-run Trading Corporation of Pakistan.

''We will likely see a slowdown.'' Traders said Pakistani importers and the TCP booked sugar when international prices were at record levels. But now domestic prices are falling, meaning those imports cannot be easily sold in the domestic market.

Sugar buying started in January, when the government estimated the country would need a million tonnes of imports in 2006 to meet domestic demand.

Pakistan's last cane crop was 45 million tonnes, producing 2.6 million tonnes of sugar, against domestic demand of 3.9 million tonnes.

This gap has forced the country to import refined sugar and pushed up domestic retail prices to an all-time high of 40 rupees ($0.66) per kg in March. Prices have since eased to 37 rupees per kg.

The TCP has been regularly buying sugar on the international market. So far, it has bought 815,000 tonnes of refined sugar from worldwide sources through 11 import tenders, while private traders imported 280,000 tonnes. Most imports come from India and Dubai.

The TCP last week scrapped a 50,000 import tender on high prices quoted by the bidders, but Malik said the corporation would soon be back in the market to buy small quantities of sugar as it was closely monitoring rising local stocks.

''An uninterrupted supply during Ramadan (the Muslim fasting month that will start in September) is very important, so we will be in the market, but not very aggressively,'' Malik said.

But traders said the market was oversupplied, and private importers have stopped importing after booking losses on cargoes because of falling domestic prices.

''I think we'll see more price falls in coming weeks ... meaning more losses for importers,'' said Abdul Majeed, a Karachi-based trader.

Many traders also believed TCP had no choice but to buy again soon, though in moderate amounts, after private importers stopped buying in May.

''Private importers are facing serious financial problems after the central bank imposed a margin on (sugar) loans,'' a Karachi-based trader said.

Last week, Pakistan's central bank imposed a 50-percent cash margin on all loans to private traders for the purchase of sugar in a move to counter hoarding. The central bank also asked commercial banks to adjust the total sugar loan disbursement to the private sector by July 31.

''They're desperate to dispose of stocks even at losses to settle loans before the deadline of July 31 because they are also facing inventory losses.'' LACK OF STORAGE Another official at TCP said the corporation, which has several godowns for storage of about 1 million tonnes of commodities, is now facing a storage problem as cotton and soybean occupy much of the space.

''Capacity constraints are a big problem now ... if we import further, we will not have a place to store,'' the official said.

''The offloading of our previous imports are not as fast as we were expecting because provinces, which initially agreed to buy 150,000 tonnes of sugar per month, are also reluctant after softening in prices,'' he said.

The government has also kept the corporation out of the retail business to facilitate more private imports.

($1=60.12 rupees) REUTERS CS SSC1531