Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Copper rose for a second day in New York and London as the dollar weakened, making metals priced in the currency cheaper for holders of other monies and boosting commodities from oil to sugar. The Dollar Index, a six-currency gauge of the greenback’s performance, fell for the first time in three days, shedding as much as 1 percent. It has lost 6.3 percent this year. Copper gained even after customs figures showed that imports of refined metal into China, the world’s biggest consumer, slid 25 percent last month. “The dollar has been supportive for metals for the past month, and we expect that to be a theme going forward,” Max Layton, an analyst at Macquarie Bank Ltd. in London, said by phone. “Everybody had been expecting imports to come off.” Copper for December delivery gained 8.05 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $2.886 a pound on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division at 8:18 a.m. local time. Futures for three-month delivery rose 2.3 percent to $6,335 a ton on the London Metal Exchange. They fell yesterday as low as $6,050, the lowest intraday price since Sept. 2. “We have seen support for copper at around $6,000,” Layton said. “Every time it has got down around that level, it has been well supported and spiked back up.” Lower Imports Chinese imports of refined copper dropped to 219,731 tons in August, figures showed today. That’s still more than double the year-earlier amount. Record inbound shipments in the first half helped the metal to more than double this year. Inventories of copper in Shanghai climbed 7 percent last week to a five-year high, rising for an eighth week. “Now when you have imports returning to more normal levels, over the next couple of months you are going to stop seeing Shanghai stock increases,” Layton said. Strengthening expansions in China, India and Indonesia prompted the Asian Development Bank to increase its forecast for economic growth this year in the region. Asia, excluding Japan, will grow 3.9 percent in 2009, faster than a March estimate of 3.4 percent, the institution said today in a report. Stockpiles of copper in warehouses monitored by the LME fell for the first time in 18 days, slipping 50 tons to 331,775 tons, according to a daily report. In Busan, a South Korean LME warehouse near China, inventories gained to 45,650 tons, up from this year’s low of 1,000 tons on July 14. Commerzbank Forecast “The demand boom in China, partly owing to the buildup of strategic stocks, will abate in the second half and a supply surplus will therefore emerge on the copper market,” Eugen Weinberg, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said in a report today. Total LME inventories have risen 11 percent this month after gaining 6.4 percent in August and 5.6 percent in July. Macquarie’s Layton predicted further increases. “Stocks will probably stop rising by the end of the year and perhaps even fall in the first quarter of next year,” he said. Canceled warrants, or metal booked for removal from warehouses, rose 40 percent to 7,550 tons. That equates to 2.3 percent of total LME stockpiles, down from 21 percent at the start of May. The copper market was in deficit by 292,000 tons in the first half, the International Copper Study Group said in a report yesterday. That was more than last year’s 234,000-ton shortfall, the report showed. “You need to add on 400,000 tons of Chinese stock build, at least,” Layton said. “The data suggest, after you account for Chinese stock build, that the market was in surplus of a couple of hundred thousand tons.” He predicted a surplus for this year of between 400,000 and 500,000 tons. Among other LME metals for three-month delivery, aluminum rose 1 percent to $1,903 a ton and lead gained 2.8 percent to $2,277.25 a ton. Zinc added 2.1 percent to $1,960 a ton, tin gained 1.4 percent to $14,700 a ton, and nickel advanced 1.8 percent to $17,715 a ton. To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Stablum in London at astablum@bloomberg.net

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