LONDON (Commodity Online): Copper-demand growth, excluding China, is set to accelerate into next year. Global copper consumption has rebounded since the global financial crisis’ said Goldman Sachs in a briefing.
However, ex-Chinese consumption has not recovered to pre-crisis levels and disappointed in 2011, with construction particularly soft in the developed world, Goldman added.
“By late 2012 and 2013, ongoing monetary easing across the main advanced economies, and in particular an improvement in metals-intensive U.S. construction, is set to result in accelerating ex-China IP (industrial production) and copper-consumption growth,” Goldman said.
“Together with the build-out of Chinese social housing (2H12 and 1H13 based), reacceleration of Chinese demand growth, and the continued ‘structural’ supply underperformance relative to ‘on paper’ forecasts, the widely accepted small surplus market in 2013 is by no means a certainty,” Goldman continued.
Goldman lists a 12-month forecast for copper of $9,000 a metric ton.
