MCX Copper yesterday settled up by 1.52% at 629.55 as dollar languished near its lowest in a week as investors began entertaining doubts about the scale of a recent rally driven by expectations of a faster pandemic recovery in the United States than elsewhere.
MCX Copper Market
Instead of increasing, as they usually do in the run up to the Lunar New Year, copper stocks in China have dropped to near decade lows on robust demand from factories that are maintaining high operating rates over the usually slow holiday period.
Peru’s copper production plunged 12.5% to 2.15 million tonnes in 2020, the country’s Energy and Mines Ministry said, driven down by coronavirus-related restrictions that hammered output in the world’s second-largest producer of the red metal.
Chile’s copper exports surged 9.3% in January, the central bank said, as the world’s top producer of the red metal saw the value of its shipments buoyed by a rising global copper price.
The jump in copper shipments, a vital source of export revenue for the South American mining giant, contributed to a trade surplus of $1.740 billion in the first month of 2021, the bank said. Copper export revenue hit $2.733 billion, the bank said, while overall exports rose 8% to $7.038 billion.
