By Anna Stablum Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Copper, little changed in London today, may rise on speculation a reviving world economy will buoy prices this year and into 2010. “Growing evidence of economic recovery that has led Goldman Sachs to boost GDP forecasts of several major economies in recent days will likely be increasingly supportive of base- metals prices later this year and into 2010,” Jeffrey Currie in London and other analysts at the bank wrote in an e-mailed research note dated yesterday. Goldman Sachs yesterday raised its forecasts for economic growth in China, the world’s biggest copper consumer, for 2009 and next year. The metal gained as much as 0.8 percent in London today even after a report showed that Chinese imports of copper dropped for the first time in six months in July. Copper for three-month delivery on the London Metal Exchange added $15, or 0.2 percent, to $6,150 a metric ton by 10:30 a.m. local time. Prices reached $6,258 yesterday, the highest since Oct. 2. Copper for September delivery climbed 0.9 percent to $2.795 a pound on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex unit. China’s imports of copper slumped to 406,612 tons in July, the Beijing-based customs office said. That was 15 percent below June’s record 477,217 tons, according to Bloomberg data. Demand from the Asian nation has helped copper to double this year on the LME. Industrial Output “We continue to expect a slowdown in Chinese imports of base metals from June highs in coming months,” Goldman Sachs’s Currie said, citing a narrower gap between London and Shanghai copper prices. Chinese industrial production increased 10.8 percent in July, a report showed today. “Although we expect some short-term factors that have lent particular support to aluminum and nickel prices to wane in coming months, we anticipate robust emerging-market growth to remain supportive of metals demand,” Currie said. Lead has jumped 86 percent this year in London, and nickel has added 73 percent. Price gains for industrial metals sped up in recent weeks, lifting the LME Index of the six metals traded on the exchange by 15 percent in July, the most this year. “We remain concerned that market speculation has caused base-metals prices to rise above levels supported by current demand for the physical product,” Kate Ward, an analyst at Hanson Westhouse Ltd. in London, said in a report today. Larger Stockpiles Copper inventories monitored by the LME rose 13 percent over the past month to 291,175 tons, according to exchange data. “We are expecting prices to ease off as the year goes on,” Eleni Joannides, an analyst at research group CRU in London, said by e-mail. She predicted a 700,000-ton surplus for the copper market this year, excluding metal stockpiled by the State Reserve Bureau, which buys commodities on behalf of China’s government. The SRB is estimated to have bought around 300,000 tons of refined metal this year, she said. Among other LME metals for three-month delivery, aluminum rose 1.2 percent to $1,992 a ton, lead slid 1 percent to $1,855.50 a ton, and nickel fell 0.2 percent, to $20,151 a ton. Zinc gained 0.8 percent to $1,864 a ton, and tin climbed 0.5 percent to $14,825 a ton. To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Stablum in London at astablum@bloomberg.net

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