BEIJING, Feb 4: The China Customs Authority registered a 136 per cent increase in import of copper from Pakistan during December to January 2005. The total value of copper imported during the outgoing year was $85 million as against $36 million during the corresponding period a year ago.

The import is almost double, showing a rapid increase in bilateral trade between the two countries in the mineral sector. China will soon start importing a big quantity of zinc and lead from Pakistan on regular basis, said Chinese commerce ministry sources here on Saturday.

The sources said Chinese companies preferred importing copper from Pakistan, which had its competitive advantage in both quality and price.

China’s demand for copper had increased greatly due to rapid economic development and big expansion of infrastructure construction, said Tang Jing, an expert with the Tongling Nonferrous Metal Research Institute.

The country’s demand for copper products in the past decade grew by more than 10 per cent annually. Shushes Smelting, China’s second-largest zinc producer by capacity, is looking to acquire mines at home and abroad to tackle a shortage of raw materials, a senior company executive said.

Wang Jianjun, head of international trade at Zhuzhou, said the company would take delivery of 50,000 tons of zinc-in-concentrate and 20,000 tons of lead a year from Duddar mine in Pakistan due to start operating in 2007.

Zhuzhou owned a stake of less than 40 per cent of the mine, he said, but would take its entire output. The majority owner of the mine is the state-owned China Metallurgical Construction Corp.

Meanwhile, China will make more investment to further expand the existing production capacity of Saindak project in Balochistan. The expansion project will be completed within a period of one year. It will enhance its production capacity to 30 per cent.

The production of copper from Saindak has been very encouraging, said an official of the MRDL, a subsidiary of Metallurgical Construction Company of China (MCC) that is working at the Saindak copper-gold project since 2003, with an initial investment of $26 million.

The China-Pakistan cooperation in the mineral sector has opened up new business prospects and it is hoped that the Saindak project will contribute tremendously to promoting economic ties.—APP