Copper falls

Beijing :The most-traded copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange was down 0.4 percent by 0115 GMT at 53,443 yuan ($8,307) a tonne, the lowest since Dec. 19.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange bumped up 0.1 percent to $7,044 a tonne, reversing losses from the previous session. BHP´s copper output jumped 20 percent to 429,000 tonnes in the quarter to end-December helped by a rise in production from its Escondida copper mine in Chile.

Shanghai base metals futures were under pressure ahead of the release of data later on Thursday that is expected to show China´s economic growth slowed in the fourth quarter. The near-across-the board decline was lead by copper and aluminium, which are trading at one-month lows.

Analysts polled by Reuters expect the world´s second-largest economy to have grown 6.7 percent in the October-December quarter from a year earlier, cooling from the previous quarter´s 6.8 percent pace.