MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peru invites Chile to coordinate copper sales globally

Peruvian president Alan Garcia has suggested Peru and Chile should coordinate copper exploitation policies so as to have better control over international prices. The initiative occurs twenty years after the dissolution of the last copper cartel in the world.

"I believe that as countries with a strong mining presence in the world we must work in a joint manner, because when brotherly countries produce and compete with the same metal, the only thing we achieve is a fall in the price of copper, and we are both losers", said Garc?a on Sunday. "Articulate and coordinate our mineral policies could be a significant message", added Garcia although he did not give more details of his proposal. The Peruvian president comments come twenty years after the end of the Inter-government Council of Copper Exporting Countries which was made up of Chile, Peru, Zaire and Zambia in the seventies. The group dissolved in 1988 without having achieved its goals. Chile's annual production is 5.6 million tons of the red metal and Peru last year managed 1.3 million tons. But Peru is facing growing unemployment and drop in investments following a poor showing of local copper companies. For example Southern Copper belonging to a Mexican group and one of the main producers in Peru lost 125 million US dollars in the last quarter of 2008 compared to a profit of 311 million US dollars the year before. The fall in international copper and other mineral prices has also seen the ranks of redundant miners increase. Southern has also announced the freezing of a billion US dollars expansion at its Tia Maria mines complex. This could have a serious impact on the country's planned growth. Copper prices are currently in the range of 1.25 US dollars a pound compared to almost 4 US dollars last year.