Copper stocks saw their gains widen during the afternoon session. At the time of writing, CMOC (03993) was up 6.77% at HKD 22.72; CHINFMINING (01258) rose 5.89% to HKD 15.29; MMG (01208) advanced 4.83% to HKD 9.98; JIANGXI COPPER (00358) increased by 4.8% to HKD 45.44; and ZIJIN MINING (02899) climbed 4.3% to HKD 41.26.

The movement follows recent comments from Duan Shaofu, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, on February 3rd. He stated that efforts will be made to improve the construction of the copper resource reserve system.

This involves expanding the scale of national strategic copper reserves on one hand, and exploring the establishment of a commercial reserve mechanism on the other. This could include trialing commercial reserves in selected state-owned backbone enterprises through methods like fiscal interest subsidies.

Furthermore, in addition to stockpiling refined copper, a study could be conducted to include copper concentrates, which have large trading volumes and are easily liquidated, into the reserve scope.

Duan Shaofu also mentioned that work on managing copper smelting capacity will be solidly advanced. Currently, over 2 million tonnes of copper smelting projects have been suspended domestically, effectively curbing the rapid growth of smelting capacity.

Going forward, the industry association will continue to cooperate with relevant national authorities to strictly control new mineral copper smelting projects, aiming to improve the situation of the逐年提升 (year-on-year increasing) external procurement ratio from the source.