LONDON: hit its lowest in more than a week on Monday under pressure from a firmer dollar and as concerns resurfaced about Europe's debt crisis and the slowdown in top copper consumer China.
The World Bank earlier cut its economic forecasts for the East Asia and Pacific region, saying the slowdown in China could get worse and last longer than expected, sparking renewed debate over a sharp decline in growth in the world's second largest economy.
The euro fell versus the dollar meanwhile, as uncertainty over the timing of a Spanish bailout request dominated sentiment and little progress was expected from a meeting of euro zone finance ministers later on.
A weak euro makes dollar-priced metal more costly for European and other non-US investors.
The dollar rallied Friday after data showed the US unemployment rate fell to a near four-year low in September, though the numbers also sparked worries that the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing programme might end prematurely.
BNP Paribas analyst Stephen Briggs said other payrolls concerns might also be dogging metals: "Realistically there's a lot of question marks around that drop in the unemplyoment rate, it may indicate some statistical anomalies."
He added: "We're in a risk off day, it's not anything very specific to base metals, we've had a pretty good run since early August so it was always likely we were going to get a correction."
Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange CMCU3 fell 1.62 percent to $8,160 per tonne by 0951 GMT, giving back more than all of last week's gains. Earlier, the metal used in power and construction touched its lowest since late September at $8,152.50.
National holidays in Japan and the United States on Monday were expected to limit trading activity.
An unexpected jump in German exports during August failed to further erode investor concerns, which have been slowly fading ever since major central banks took action last month to easy monetary policy and support growth.
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