So looking through some of the Chinese trade data yesterday, was September another month of where the country took advantage of low commodity prices to boost stocks of key resources such as oil, copper, iron ore etc?
There was certainly evidence of that happening in August, and September saw sharp falls in all commodity prices – oil fell around 24%, copper was down sharply and iron ore was off 13%.
Partly for that reason, Chinese imports by value fell for the 11th straight month, down 20% year-on-year in September.
Certainly preliminary data shows big jumps in copper and iron ore imports last month as buyers took advantage of weak global prices.
China’s crude oil imports edged higher in September, up 1.4% year-over-year to 27.95 million tonnes, and up 8.6% from August in daily terms at 6.83 million barrels.
In the first nine months of this year, Chinese oil imports were up 8.8% year-over-year to 248.62 million tonnes in the first nine months of the year.
China’s coal imports fell 16% in September from a year earlier to 17.77 million tonnes, with weak demand and a domestic supply glut and changing government policy deterring imports.
Imports though were up a tiny 1.6% from August.
Coal imports in the first nine months fell 30% to 156.36 million tonnes, with foreign suppliers struggling to compete in a massively oversupplied market.
China’s iron ore imports surged 16% from August to 86.12 million tonnes in September, the highest this year.
That was also well above the 84.7 million tonnes imported in September of last year. China imported 74.12 million tonnes in August, down sharply on the near record 86.10 million tonnes in July.
For the first nine months of this year, iron ore imports were just over 699 million tonnes, down from 705 million in the same period of 2014.
Amid weaker domestic demand, China’s steel exports hit a record high of 11.25 million tonnes in September, up more than 13% from August’s9.7 million tonnes. For the first 9 months of the year exports were up a quarter at just over 83 million tonnes
And, China’s monthly copper imports surged a third in September, hitting a 20-month high after staying flat in the previous three months as buyers took advantage of a slide in global prices.
Imports of anode, refined copper, copper alloys and semi-finished copper products reached 460,000 tonnes last month, the highest since January 2014 and well up on the 350,000 tonnes in June, July and August. Imports were up nearly 18% from September 2014.
In the first three quarters, imports dropped 5.5% from a year ago to 3.39 million tonnes.
Imports of raw material copper concentrate rose 5.2% to 1.21 million tonnes in September, compared to 1.15 million tonnes in August, but were down 6.2% from a year ago.
