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Gold/Mining/Energy : Precious and Base Metal Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: loantech who wrote (31866)	10/27/2004 5:43:28 PM
From: Roads End	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39344

HUGO's bid today must have been Wang's mention here. China needs to look abroad for copper resources By Robin Paxton HAIKOU, Hainan, Oct 27 (Reuters) - China's leading copper producers must find and develop overseas mining resources if they are to keep pace with the country's surging demand for the red metal, a leading industry official said. Beijing should increase direct investment in major exploration projects, set up risk investment funds and enlarge credit lines for Chinese companies searching for copper in other countries, said Wang Gongmin, vice president of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association. "China's copper demand is expected to keep growing at a fast rate in coming years, and copper raw materials supply will become one of the outstanding issues," Wang said in a paper prepared for the 2004 China International Copper Forum in Haikou. China, which consumes around a fifth of the world's copper, is hungry for the key industrial metal to feed an economy that grew 9.1 percent in the year through the third quarter. China's copper consumption was seen growing more than 15 percent to 3.79 million tonnes this year, Wang said, but refined copper output would rise by only 9 percent to around 2 million tonnes. Based on GDP growth of between 8 and 9 percent in the next few years, Wang said copper consumption in China could reach 4.48 million tonnes in 2005 and more than 10 million in 2010. "China's copper production has largely relied on imported raw materials, and this situation will last for a long time," he said. "In order to ease the increasing supply tightness of raw materials in China, we should gear up exploration and exploitation of resources, both at home and abroad, as soon as possible." SMELTERS LEAD SEARCH China's largest copper smelters, including Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd., Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Inc. and Yunnan Copper Co. Ltd., were leading China's search for overseas mining resources, Wang said. But he said it was difficult for these companies to gain risk investment under China's current system of foreign exchange management. He added Chinese companies' ability to invest directly in overseas projects was limited by their relatively small size in global terms. "The government should stipulate preferential policies," said