The crown of some foreign media that the two sessions held for decades the most important meeting of 2013, the market for the General Assembly to tell the metal market and what impact a variety guess.

First, we briefly recall the history. Opening two sessions in 2012 when the price of copper is at a high level during the meeting only in the range of smaller shocks, but nearly a month later at the end of the meeting Powei down. Rebar prices are also soon in two sessions after started a more substantial decline. 2012 NPC and CPPCC Shanghai Futures Exchange copper prices fell 1.7% Total. During the two sessions held in 2011, the Shanghai Futures Exchange copper futures prices cumulative decline of more than 7%. Only from the results of these two statistical point of view, the two sessions did not seem to be able to the metal to promote the real meaning of good the final market performance was significantly weaker.

For this year's two sessions will be talking about economic policy, the focus of the market is mainly concentrated in the industrial development and monetary policy. Will during the meeting will discuss environmental policies, energy policies, as well as new economic development objectives and the expected level of inflation is generally expected.

Environmental policy and industrial policy in terms of energy, steel and non-ferrous metals industries are high-polluting industries in the traditional sense. Two sessions held in the fog and haze of a large area of ​​North China before the end of the case, one can imagine that will bring the future development of high-polluting enterprises variables. Capacity in general is also a low-cost production capacity due to high pollution, environmental pollution control of the metal industry is very likely to accelerate the rising cost of steel and non-ferrous metal production. But we need to pay attention to the message itself may produce some short-term impact on the market price, but the rise in the cost of production will eventually transfer to the market price will be a very long process.

Compared to the industrial policy, the most direct and guide the metal prices or economic growth targets and the expected level of inflation, as well as financial and monetary policy. The leading bodies of the two sessions will produce the new session of the national institutions, investors for the new policy also prone to more conjecture.

Current message, the vast majority of the predictions are that this year's economic growth target will be around 7.5%, unchanged from 2012. Despite the U.S. economic recovery is becoming more and more determined, the traditional China's largest export objects in Europe is still living in the quagmire, in the case of export is not effectively recover, even if it is to increase the scale of investment in fixed assets, to achieve 7.5% economic growth target is still not easy, so we believe that ultimately the economic growth target will not significantly deviate from this level. The fixed assets investment scale further expansion should undoubtedly meetings, but to expand the magnitude determine the scale of demand for the metal. As the financial pressure faced by the local government, the new government has not yet completed that seek the possibility of substantial expansion of investment in fixed assets is very small in the case of local government financing platform rectification. The final GDP growth target is recognized as about 7.5%, so obviously not achieve a decisive boost to all kinds of metal right now ubiquitous high inventory.

From a monetary policy point of view towards further clarified in the level of inflation, the central bank apparently will not easily change the current cautious attitude. Although the mainstream view is that the earlier Central Economic Work Conference signals given this year's economic development goals "steady partial loose" monetary policy, but in the years since, the central bank accumulated from the open market to return the funds nearly trillion yuan, funds face steadily tightening trend reversed sharply in the short term the possibility is very small, not enough to make the metal market currency environment is a fundamental change.

We believe that the metal market during the two sessions due to the probability of strong policy reasons, investors should not have too high expectations of the "two sessions Quotes. The government policy also is limited by a number of objective conditions, blindly expect massive investment-led economic growth, driven by the rise in commodity prices is likely to be disappointed.

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The monthly Rare Earths MMI® continued its nosedive, dropping three points to register a value of 43 in February, a decrease of 6.5 percent.

What makes this month’s reading interesting, though, has little to do with the headline number and more to do with which metals within the complex led the rout –in particular, yttria, terbium oxide, rare earth carbonate, praseodymium oxide, neodymium oxide, europium oxide and dysprosium oxide.

The other half of the metals within the index actually posted price gains, including neodymium, praseodymium neodymium, and lanthanum oxide, among others. However, neodymium has now also dropped in price, since the monthly MMI reading on Feb. 1.

Rare earth analysts have reported that Chinese rare earth export numbers remain problematic, in that different Chinese sources have published different numbers.

Regardless of which numbers one looks at, rare earth prices have dropped because more supply has and will continue to come on-stream, including from Lynas, who as of this writing may have just cleared its last legal hurdle and will commence operations in Malaysia this month.

Until/unless China itself creates more of its own demand for rare earth metals, Chinese rare earth producers’ net profits will continue to slide. And prices may continue to do the same.

Primary Price Drivers of the Rare Earths Index

Dysprosium oxide prices plummeted 15.1 percent for the month. Terbium oxide prices fell nearly as hard, plunging 12 percent.

The price of neodymium oxide fell 9.4 percent. The europium oxide price was down 2.2 percent for the month.

Meanwhile, the price of yttrium increased a slight 0.3 percent. Prices for lanthanum oxide followed suit, rising 0.3 percent, as did neodymium, terbium metal and cerium oxide.
 

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Research in Japan, said earlier in South Bird Island in the Pacific waters of undersea discovery of a large number of rare earth ore concentration is very high, some element concentration is 30 times higher than China's rare earth mine in southern. Japanese experts also said that these rare earth mine as a high possibility that a large number of mining resources.

Last year, the research team of the University of Tokyo in Japan South Bird Island exclusive economic zone mud found a large number of rare earth ore, last month, the research team once again went to the scene to investigate. The survey found that the rare earth concentrations as high as 5000 meters above sea bottom mud 6000PPM. Dysprosium elements integral concentration which produced environmentally friendly cars 20 rare earth mine in southern China for IT equipment of terbium elements and for LED lighting equipment europium element concentrations are 16 rare earth mine in southern China and 35 times.

Kato Thai ho, professor at the University of Tokyo, said the high concentration of rare earth ore mining high possibility as a resource in the top of the undersea. World and not in the 5000 meters in the ultra-deep sea resource exploitation precedent, METI will future mining technology research.
 

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PROFESSOR of Supra-molecular Chemistry and Dean of the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the University of the West Indies Dr Ishenkumba Kahwa says Jamaica's venture into the extraction of rare earth metals from red mud presents exciting prospects for high-end jobs.

"The beautiful thing about the project is that it has the potential to generate high calibre jobs; there is extraction, making of products, separation of the rare earth elements. There are about 17 of them; the kind of skill we are going to need is quite interesting; so it will attract high-value jobs, so we are very excited about it," Professor Kahwa told the Jamaica Observer following Monday's ground-breaking ceremony for the US$3-million pilot plant to be constructed on the premises of the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI) at Hope Gardens in St Andrew.

Professor Kahwa also expressed confidence that Jamaica had the expertise to staff the project, which will be shared jointly with personnel from Japanese company Nippon Light Metals who are funding the effort.

"We do have capacity, [as] in my own research group we have trained about 13 PhD graduates, and a good number of those are on rare earth chemistry; so we have people to manage the chemistry. We have students who are in the system. Now, once they know jobs will open up they will be sufficiently excited, so the capacity is here," he told the Observer.

"What we are seeing today is an excellent opportunity for us to be able not only to exploit our own resource, but we have the expertise that can be directed towards preparation and development of materials that are of high value," he added.

In the meantime, Professor Kahwa, who has been on the cutting edge of research in the area, said the project's potential impact on the environment was negligible.

"There are environmental concerns, but they are not concerns that we cannot manage, I am not worried in the least about that," he said.

In the meantime, he said the University of the West Indies, and Jamaica by extension, was no stranger to the subject area. "Our work at the University of the West Indies has spanned quite a period of time. I came here 1987 and the university was already involved in the research on rare earths, looking at basically the composition and the potential and so forth. There were other players as well, ALCAN (aluminium producer) was doing a lot of work. In fact, they have a patent for the extraction of rare earth from red mud," Professor Kahwa said.

He, however, noted that Jamaica's extraction work in the early 90s was short-lived because of China's trade which had the lion share of the industry.

"The Chinese have deposits in this stuff, they really flooded the market and the prices of rare earth went down substantially; so we shifted gears from extracting the metals to value-added products. So we have been making materials that can be used in biomedicine for diagnostic purposes, as catalysts, as laser material things like that," Professor Kahwa said.

With China's present state, however, Jamaica's window of opportunity might be bigger, he pointed out.

"They (China) have environmental issues and therefore they have restricted their imports, and hence the price of rare earth has gone back up again. Not only that, but if you need large quantities you might have a challenge sourcing those. So areas that were not particularly attractive, such as rare earths in red mud, are now attractive as a source of those elements. The price of it now is sufficiently good to actually warrant efforts to try and extract it," Professor Kahwa told the Observer.

Meanwhile, he said Jamaica would still have to work on creating niche markets. "... We have to optimise that process, because the Chinese are still there with their very cheap source, there are other countries like Australia, Africa and America that have some, so the question is how we actually put things in a way that actually is economical and makes money for us," Professor Kahwa said.
 

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