Market and product
Codelco sees healthy copper demand in China
Mr Rodrigo Toro corporate senior sales VP of Codelco said that the growth of demand in China is practically unstoppable. Beijing's tighter monetary policy was a healthy dose to control the country's breakneck growth.
Mr Toro said that said that we are happy to see the demand in China will continue at very healthy rate, not as big as would be at 12% GDP growth, because producers would not be able to respond to that additional demand.
He said that the global copper demand growth would be 4% this year, but it might improve next year if the economy picked up pace.
Mr Diego Hernandez CEO of Codelco said that the company produced 1.782 million tonnes of copper in 2009 up 16% from a year earlier after years of dwindling output. The company expected to maintain the same level of output this year as well as in the next 2 years.
The company said earlier this year that it planned to invest USD 3 billion each year for the next 5 years to revamp century old mines and exploit new deposits as part of its plan to lift output to around 2 million tonnes of copper per year.
(Sourced from Reuters)
