Dont forget we have copper
Economic growth in China maystart to slow as the world’s metal producers fail to keep up withChinese demand. But that shouldn’t prevent copper from hitting $10 innext three years: consultant.
Aninsatiable appetite for metals will lead to an inevitable slowdown inChina’s economic growth rate as the major producers struggle to keep upwith the Asian country’s demand, a metals sector consultant saidTuesday.
“It’s not going to be a crash, but the breaks are coming on,’’ saidJack Lifton, a metals industry consultant, who is also the foundingprincipal of TMR Metals Research in Detroit.
One of a panel of experts who spoke at the PDAC mining convention inToronto , Lifton said the world does not have the productive capacityto feed the appetite of a country like China, which has experiencednear double digit growth in the last 30 years.
In order to feed that growth, China has been consuming massiveamounts of metal, including 38% of the world’s copper production. Butin order to curb price inflation, the Chinese government is currentlytrying to slow the economic growth rate to about 7% from 11% in 2010.
“What people don’t seem to understand is that it takes about 10years to develop a mine,’’ said Lifton. “It also takes a huge amount ofmoney.”