A marginal short term impact, which might result in slightly lower prices, was considered possible, they said. But even if exceptionally strong growth rates do moderate, absolute demand was likely to remain very healthy, the producers added.

“Generally speaking, the rate hike may cool down the Chinese economy,”said Mikinobu Ogata, general manager of concentrate procurement and cathode sales at Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining.

“But... copper consumption is still very robust because it is used mainly for electric generation systems,”Ogata said, explaining that this was an area where China’s Central Government was spending a lot of money.

As result, the effect of higher interest rates on copper would be“very limited,”he said.

The People’s Bank of China said Thursday that it would boost the one-year lending rate to 5.58 percent from 5.31 percent in its first rate hike in nine years.

The news saw London Metal Exchange copper for three-month delivery shed 2.6 percent to a two-week low of US$2,725 a metric ton. But the price has since recovered.

Anglo-Australian resources giant BHP Billiton (BHP), one of the world’s largest copper producers, declined to comment on the specifics of the rate hike. But its view toward China had not changed as a result of the move, a spokeswoman said.

“We’ve always said there would be bumps and bruises along the way, but we believe China’s growth is sustainable over the long term and we take a long term view,”she said.

The marketing manager with a major Asia-Pacific copper concentrate exporter, which sells material to China via traders, said it was too soon to gauge the full impact of the rate hike.

But he stressed the copper market was likely to remain strong, and that it would do so, in large measure, because of China.

Chinese demand was still“very strong and still very much driving the market,”he said, adding that this would continue.

“The copper price is US$1.30 a pound (0.45 kilograms) at the moment, and if something happened that brought it down to US$1.20 a pound say, that’s nothing to get upset about when we consider that it wasn’t that long ago when it was 60 U.S. cents a pound,”he said.

Ogata said Chinese copper demand growth would slow, but that it would likely remain at double-digit levels.

“Of course, the last couple of years the increase in copper demand in China was more than 20 percent (year on year),”he said. It may now“slow down a little bit, but I think it will be maintained above 10 percent.”

Ogata said Sumitomo currently sold 4,000 tons of copper cathode a month to the Chinese market, mainly to companies in the electronics sector. This level was not likely to fall anytime soon, he said.

“We just began negotiations with them for next year’s deliveries and they are asking us to increase tonnage,”he said.