Hong Kong - Zinc gained for a third day, leading most metals higher, after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang vowed the government would take measures to shore up growth should reforms slow the economy and cut into employment.
Zinc rose as much as 0.9 percent and traded near the highest level in a week. The central government will protect job creation and policymakers would take action if growth drifted toward the lower end of the 7 percent target for 2015, Li said on Sunday.
Bloomberg’s gross domestic product tracker, which draws on measures such as electricity production, shows the pace weakened to 6.28 percent in February.
“These comments over the weekend probably gave a little bit more comfort to the manufacturing sector in China,” said Daniel Hynes, a senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. “That would be supportive of prices.”
Zinc for delivery in three months rose 0.8 percent to $2 026 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange at 10.47am in Hong Kong.
Copper in London climbed 0.2 percent to $5 868 a ton ($2.66 a pound). In New York, May futures advanced 0.3 percent to $2.672 a pound, while in Shanghai metal for the same month dropped 0.3 percent to 42 730 yuan ($6 823) a ton.
Inventories of copper monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose to 241 616 tons, the highest since April 2013, according to data released by the bourse March 13. Prices will extend declines amid weaker demand from China, the world’s top consumer, and as inventories climb this year and in 2016, Goldman Sachs Group analysts including Jeffrey Currie in New York wrote in a report dated March 13.
Also on the LME, aluminum and tin rose, while nickel and lead fell.
Bloomberg