LONDON: Copper prices held steady on Friday and were on track to close the week little changed as the dollar retained gains on expectactions that the US Federal Reserve would raise interest rates this month.
Though the dollar eased on Friday, the previous two days' gains served to outweigh concerns over a strike at the world's largest copper mine in Chile.
A stronger greenback makes dollar-denominated assets such as copper more expensive for holders of other currencies.
The US Federal Reserve has been propelled towards what could be a first sustained series of interest rate increases in more than a decade by a surge in business and consumer confidence during President Donald Trump's first weeks in office despite a lack of policy detail from the administration.
"I'm surprised that we haven't seen more of a move up in copper given the supply disruptions, but obviously weighing on copper is the heightened prospect that we could have a rate hike in March," said Capital Economics senior commodities economist Caroline Bain.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was barely changed at $5,930 a tonne at 1118 GMT, on track to end the week about 0.1 percent down.
Prices have consolidated in a $5,800-$6,200 range since hitting a 20-month high of $6,204 on Feb. 13.
Bain said the market was also anticipating any announcement of an increase in Chinese infrastrure spending during a 10-day meeting of the National People's Congress starting on Sunday.
Data from China this week, including manufacturing and service sector activity, cast doubt over the sustained growth of the world's second-largest economy and copper's largest consumer.
Although the factory activity in China expanded faster than expected Bain said there were signs that the construction sector was slowing, which is negative for copper.
"There are some doubts starting to creep in about how sustainable Chinese demand is going to be this year," she said. Elsewhere, the Philippines could consider banning exports of unprocessed minerals such as nickel in an effort to promote value addition in the mining sector, a senior environment official said on Friday.
Nickel was the biggest gainer among LME metals, rising 1.4 percent to $10,930 a tonne.
Tin and lead were flat at $19,350 and $2,253 respectively. Aluminium was little-changed at $1,912.50. Zinc rose 0.7 percent to $2,802.
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