Balance shift apparent over 30 years

摘要

It is unlikely the current global economic meltdown - and its expected recovery - will identically affect major copper consumers or countries which are heavy users of the base metal. Furthermore, in terms of production, Chile looks set to continue to dominate the world scene despite the emergence of new sources of the red metal in the Pacific Rim and Central Asia. In addition, copper refining is expected to remain in the consuming countries of Asia, although there should now be a greater effort by the other mining nations to process the metal in order to capture more of the potential value.