The copper price has suffered along with many other commodities in the COVID-19 epidemic but experts hope China's $570 billion stimulus will save the metal.
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Analysts say the spend will be primarily on infrastructure, with carmaking operations already restarted in Wuhan (the ground zero of the epidemic).
Hopefully it is good news for North West Queensland's biggest export mineral at the end of the week where futures prices were trading well below a January peak but faring better than other markets, like oil.
Copper is used in include electronics, plumbing and electrical equipment and analysts say so far it has held up much better than other economic-sensitive markets.
The S&P Copper index fell by 1.3% over the first seven trading days in March, compared with a decline of 11.4% for the S&P overall
Copper was one of the first market casualties of the COVID-19 outbreak, given that demand for the metal is strongly linked to the Chinese manufacturing sector and the price plummeted 11% from its most recent high in January.
"If COVID-19 is responsible for a short and sharp hit to global economic activity and not a protected global economic slowdown...then the negative blow to copper demand is likely to be relatively short-lived," says Boal.
Copper prices on the London Metal Exchange and Comex went to their lowest rate in three years.
On the LME cash copper was $5,482 per metric tonne on March 9 and Comex futures prices at $2.4725 a pound on Thursday.
However the year-to-date drop of nearly 12% for copper futures is beter than the Dow Industrials decline of over 26%.
Analysts are betting China will stimulate its recovering economy and copper will benefit.
The problem for China is the likely collapse of export demand as the rest of the world shuts down.
Some analysts predict the future price of copper drop to $2.20, a rate not seen since October 2016.
READ ALSO: Latest COVID-19 stats in Queensland
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