At the 2020 World Economic Forum (WEF), Benedikt Sobotka (ERG’s CEO) participated in the Reuters-led Global Markets Forum hosted by Chinese CCTV+ Video News Agency. He shared ERG’s vision on market trends and told Reuters that an easing in the US-China trade dispute could push copper prices to high $6000s. He believes that the copper market’s fundamentals will be strong in 2020 driven by Chinese infrastructure investment, electric vehicles and charging stations. “All the fundamentals suggest China will be the largest economy for the next 100 years – by sheer productivity growth and demographics. China has managed over the last ten years to become by far the dominant player in the electric vehicle industry in terms of the purchasing of raw materials required in the technology for batteries, the manufacturing process, the capacity for manufacturing batteries and it is not just electric vehicles but all mobile phones too; they are all manufactured in China.”
This year the WEF in Davos celebrated its 50th anniversary. Around 2800 participants from 118 countries attended under the theme “Stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world”.