THE OUTLOOK FOR COPPER

摘要

Years of weak prices and the resulting lack of exploration and new mine development, coupled with a resurgence in world industrial growth led by China, have driven the copper market into a serious imbalance that is taking some time to correct. In response, copper miners are fast-tracking many projects towards production, but with a bottleneck at the smelter level, prices are widely expected to remain at historically high levels for at least another year. The LME average cash copper price in 2004 increased by 61 percent to 1.30/lb dollars from the 2003 average -the highest yearly average since 1995. The price increased in nine of the twelve months, starting from an average of 0.998/lb dollars in December 2003 and ending at a historic high of 1.43/lb dollars in December 2004. Increasing mine production failed to close the gap with rising consumption in all regions, especially in China, as refined copper output was hampered by a bottleneck in smelter capacity. During 2004, copper stockpiles in exchanges' warehouses dropped by almost 85 percent-from 806,000 mt to just 124,300 mt. This was in spite of a 200,000 mt sale of Codelco's inventories and a similar amount sold by the Chinese government.