HK Stock Market Move | Copper stocks rose in the afternoon, and the Nonferrous Metals Industry Association said it will improve the construction of the copper reserve system, possibly including copper concentrate in the reserves.

The copper industry stocks expanded in the afternoon, as of the time of writing, CMOC Group Limited (03993) rose 6.77% to 22.72 Hong Kong dollars; CHINFMINING (01258) rose 5.89% to 15.29 Hong Kong dollars; MMG (01208) rose 4.83% to 9.98 Hong Kong dollars; JIANGXI COPPER (00358) rose 4.8% to 45.44 Hong Kong dollars; Zijin Mining Group (02899) rose 4.3% to 41.26 Hong Kong dollars. On the news front, on February 3, Duan Shaofu, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, stated that the construction of the copper resource reserve system will be improved. On one hand, this includes expanding the national strategic copper reserve scale, and on the other hand, exploring the establishment of a commercial reserve mechanism, choosing state-owned backbone enterprises to implement commercial reserves through financial subsidies. In addition to reserving refined copper, it is also possible to consider including copper concentrates with large trading volumes and easy liquidity into the reserve scope. Duan Shaofu also mentioned that efforts will be made to solidly promote the governance of copper smelting capacity. Currently, more than 2 million tons of copper smelting projects have been halted domestically, effectively restraining the trend of rapid growth in copper smelting capacity. In the future, industry associations will continue to cooperate with relevant state departments to strictly control the approval of new mining copper smelting projects in order to improve the current situation where the ratio of external procurement is increasing year by year from the source.