Newswire: Asia-Pacific

international.gc.ca

U.S.’s Treasury’s Geithner to attend Singapore APEC meeting – Reuters

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner travels to Singapore to attend a meeting of finance ministers who are members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for one day next month.

China Minmetals eyes gold mines in Australia, Canada – Reuters

* Company to start construction at Peru copper mine next yr

* Production at Peru mine scheduled to begin in 2012 (Adds background, bylines)

By Rujun Shen and Joseph Chaney

TIANJIN, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Chinese state-owned metals trader China Minmetals Corp. [CHMIN.UL] is looking to buy gold mines in Australia and Canada, a senior executive said on Thursday.

Huang Dongmei, deputy general manager of China Minmetals Exploration and Development Ltd, made the remarks at an industry forum in China’s port city of Tianjin.

Separately, a Minmetals executive at the China Mining conference here said on Wednesday that the company would launch construction at its Galeno copper mine in Peru next year, with production due to start in 2012. [ID:nPEK200915]

Ecuador Seeks Cash to End Three-Year Oil Output Drop (Update1) – Bloomberg

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — Ecuador, the smallest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is seeking to attract investment from state-run companies in Latin America, Russia and China to reverse a three-year drop in crude output.

Ecuador is forging alliances to explore and produce crude as lower investment by privately-owned companies causes production to drop as much as 6.6 percent this year, Julio Gonzalez, undersecretary of hydrocarbons policy at the Ministry of Non-Renewable Natural Resources, said in an interview.

“The government’s priority is to do this with state companies,” Gonzalez said yesterday at the ministry in Quito.

Kevin Rudd’s vision for Asia-Pacific community evolves – The Australian

KEVIN Rudd’s concept of an Asia-Pacific community by 2020 has been canvassed at the weekend’s East Asia summit in Thailand together with a rival vision from new Japanese leader Yukio Hatoyama.

East Asian leaders meeting in Hua Hin yesterday discussed the broad regional architecture, with the Prime Minister promoting his plan both at the formal leaders’ meeting and in a series on bilateral discussions.

“What I detect across the region is an openness to a discussion about how we evolve our regional architecture into the future,” Mr Rudd said yesterday.

“It’s important that we are in a conscious discussion and a conscious process to evolve options for regional institutions in the future rather than just sitting back and waiting for big problems to emerge.”

New potential strikes looming for Peru’s mining industry

Shougang is not the only miner down in Peru for which trouble is brewing. Peru’s national federation of mine workers said on Friday (yesterday), it is planning to hold walkouts across the entire sector next week.

libcom.org

“The position of the workers is to go on strike on Monday starting at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT) and leave the mines,” Luis Castillo, the federation’s director, told Reuters.

Reuters reports some unions have agreed to stay on the job, but considering that Peru is the largest producer of silver in the world, #2 of zinc, #3 of copper, #4 of lead, and #6 in gold—such a walk out does have the potential ripple over into global spot prices for the above mentioned metals.

When miners held a similar strike in mid-2008 and the strike helped push copper prices toward a record high—although this was at the peak of bull markets, the market effect is no less noted. The underlying point; markets are watching and investors pay attention to these kinds of things.

Company’s which will be affected include, Volcan (VOL_pb.LM), Newmont (NEM), Freeport-McMoRan’s (FXN), Xstrata’s (XTA.L), Buenaventura (BVN), Southern Copper (PCU) and BHP Billiton (BHP).

Click here to access a more details story on this topic from Reuters.

As always, CSA will keep you up to date with relevant developments as they unfold.

~ Benito

[Commodities] — Is the rally over?

Commodity Rally May Falter on Supply, Speculators

June 29 (Bloomberg) — Commodities, heading for the first quarterly advance in a year, may struggle to repeat their gains in the next three months as supply expands and speculators sell.

Nickel may average 29 percent less in the third quarter than now, crude oil 16 percent, copper 14 percent and gasoline 10 percent, analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. Hedge funds and speculators cut their bets on higher prices by 23 percent in the two weeks ended June 23, the first back-to-back drop since March, based on an index using U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. The World Bank said June 22 the global recession will be deeper than it expected three months ago.

“Commodities have gotten a little ahead of themselves,” said Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps oversee $30 billion at Morgan Asset Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “As long as there’s uncertainty about growth, that’s going to be headwind commodities won’t be able to overcome.”

Commodities rose 14 percent this quarter, led by nickel, oil and sugar, after three consecutive declines, according to the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials. This year’s 57 percent advance in oil costs, combined with widening budget deficits, may cause another global slump, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economics professor who predicted the financial crisis.

Click here to access the full article from Bloomberg

Laying the foundation for a tri-nation Boliviaran mining giant in South America

[South-South Cooperation] – Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia

The Ecuadorian government announced plans yesterday of the establishment of a joint mining company with the country of Venezuela and possibly Bolivia. You can read all the vague details in this article from Chinamining.

“We are going to build a great mining company in association with Venezuela and perhaps with Bolivia to exploit some veins of mine ore returned to the State from private hands,”said Ecuadorian Minister of Mines and Petroleum Derlis Palacios.

Jim Rogers: "We are going to have serious food shortages in a few years"

Jim Rogers sits down with Bloomberg host Haslinda Amin in his home base of Singapore. Haslinda gets a full twenty minutes to test his patience while she asks what his opinions are on investing in a variety of investment categories. Commodities. Currencies. North American Natural Gas. Yen Carry Trade. Agriculture. Equities. ETF’s.

As usual, Jim Rogers is sticking to what he knows best-raw materials. If you’re a new reader, or have not heard of Jim Rogers definitely run a search on the right of his name to bring up past posts and videos including him.

Part 1 /3

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Part 2 / 3

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Part 3 / 3

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWLjEEEIEL0&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1]

Jim Rogers: Speak Mandarin, Don't Buy America

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Copper in focus: Southern Copper Peru (PCU) updates

Southern Copper Peru – listed on the NYSE, under the ticker PCU (google finance info)

Southern Copper Peru has recently has seen its shares fall across all exchanges in which this Mexican Conglomerate trades– There are many reasons and factors at play, however at the moment a mix of both the fact copper has recently declined in international markets, but also because, a important area of Peru, where Southern Copper operates is experiencing union strikes and are protesters who have blocked Peru’s main roads the area.

Argentina witnessed la Presidente– la Senora Kichner deliver a speech this evening about her own countries protesters blocked roads. I may not love their populist rhetoric or economic policy, but Mrs. Kirchner said something that makes sense… (translated from her speech shown on CNN espanol), “a select group of society can not paralyze the road and the country as a whole, they have no right to disrupt all the people’s in their own self-pursuit.”

I admit I may be butchering the speech in the moment but, the fact remains… In Latin America, roads are blocked and then the economy stops. Without infrastructure, or the preventing of people from using the little infrastructure that does exist, Latin America remains in a “catch 22.” In situations where it socially may make sense to implement reforms, governments are forced to make concessions due to necessity.

Photos below are pictures of PCU’s operations in Peru and links to available financial info– via Google.com/finance and yahoo finance –> Southern Copper Peru (PCU)

I recall being in Tarapoto, Peru, in the Peruvian province of San Martin in 2002. Rice workers had paralyzed the region because US subsidies had made their rice more expensive than the also available imported rice from the US. The protesters took over the town square over and as temporary tourist I had to rush through the back roads in the amazon to the Airport, and hide out in a back office until a flight could take myself and my family of 12 back to Lima.

Click here to view a article in English I was able to find about the incident.

It is ironic food prices are now so high, Tarapoto’s Rice industry is now growing rice and actually making a profit, although US subsidies still aren’t help the overall market. The fact and main point I am attempting to get across is that all it took for protesters to paralyze the region was to blockade one highway–leaving the city isolated. and disrupting economic activity in the rest of the region due to the fact major roads pass through Tarapoto, the biggest city in the region.

I hope in a general sense things improve– both on the part of the protesters in Peru, who do deserve new benefits as a result of high commodity prices, but also for Peru as a whole which in reality suffers a great deal, proportionately speaking when events such as this occur.