The Guardian - 22 Jan - China's energy and metals demand slid again last month as its economy worsened, according to official figures released on Thursday that also showed a few opportunists making the most of hard times.
Chief among the opportunists may be China's government, which has been taking advantage of cheap prices to stock up on everything from crude oil to soybeans, causing some blips in data that pointed to a continued slowdown in the economy.
Economic growth slumped to 6.8 percent in the final quarter of 2008, bringing growth for the full year to a seven-year low of 9.0 percent, China's National Bureau of Statistics said, with some economists expecting worse is to come.
The economy's dwindling appetite for energy in December cut China's electricity generation for a third month running, down by 7.9 percent on December 2007, and its vast coal production showed a rare year-on-year fall of 1.3 percent.
With few buyers at home or abroad, China's coal imports fell 38 percent and exports dropped 22 percent, according to data from the country's General Administration of Customs.
Demand for oil fell 5.5 percent from a year earlier in December after declining 3.2 percent in November, a Reuters calculation showed, pointing to a fast declining appetite from the world's second-biggest consumer of oil.
"For oil, the market demand should remain bearish before any apparent signs of an economic recovery, even though China has stepped up building reserves," said a Beijing-based analyst with a research firm, who declined to be named for personal reasons.
Demand has fallen by about 500,000 barrels per day since October, roughly equivalent to the amount consumed by Argentina. Around half the slowdown has fallen on Angola, which vied for much of 2008 with Saudi Arabia to be top supplier to China. Its exports to China have shed almost 250,000 barrels per day since October, putting it at risk of being pushed into fifth position as a Chinese supplier behind Iran, Oman and Sudan.
China's refiners responded to the demand slump by slamming on the brakes in December, cutting processing by the biggest margin in 7-1/2 years. But crude continued to flow in, 4 percent faster than in November, as the government seized on low-priced crude for its reserves.
As well as crude oil, China's has been shopping for metals and commodities such as rubber, sugar and grains. The mere anticipation of the State Reserves Bureau (SRB) seeking copper may have been enough to spark a rush to sell copper to China in December. Copper imports jumped 89 percent on the year to a record, helped by relatively high Chinese prices and bunched term shipments at end-year. The import surge pushed China's apparent demand for copper up 3.9 percent in the month, the only metal to show an increase.
Traders are able to divert cargoes towards a quick profit because shipping costs collapsed in late 2008, opening long-closed arbitrage or trade routes never seen before.
Coal, coffee and zinc alloys arrived from the United States, while Peru and Mexico jumped up the ranks of suppliers of zinc ore and concentrates.
Iron ore supplies from Peru, which Chinese President Hu Jintao visited in November, also jumped 700 percent. It made the Latin American country, where Chinese-owned Shougang Hierro Peru is the top iron ore miner, China's No.5 supplier ahead of Russia and Indonesia.
That comes just as China's steel industry is trying to rebound with indirect help from a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) state stimulus package. Hopes of stimulus-related sales may have been behind a 7 percent month-on-month rise in crude steel output, the first such rise in six months. Steel production was still 10.5 percent below December 2007.
Steel revival hopes may also have been behind an 89 percent jump in China's output of nickel, used in stainless steel.
Market sources said firms such as Jinchuan and Jilin Nickel started up new capacity in November, just as many others were cutting output to try and stem their losses from falling prices.
In another anomaly, China's December exports of aluminium surged, accounting for over 40 percent of 2008's total.
Traders said the cash crunch and tight credit had forced merchants to sell overseas, amid weak domestic demand, with one re-exporting more than 40,000 tonnes, which could account for much of December's export bulge.
Source: The Guardian
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