HANOI: London copper was set for its biggest weekly drop since September 2020 on Friday, hit by fears that authorities in China would take measures to curb a rally in commodity prices.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell 0.9% to $9,962 a tonne by 0519 GMT, down 2.7% on a weekly basis.

The most-traded June copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange declined 0.7% to 72,340 yuan ($11,244.97) a tonne, also on track for a weekly decline.

China, the world's biggest copper user, said on Wednesday it would strengthen its management of commodity supply and demand to curb "unreasonable" increases in prices, and prevent them being passed on to consumers.

"The statement from Beijing about curbing high commodity prices due to excessive speculation seems to be sinking in and it now appears to be becoming a battle between Beijing's wishes and massive amounts of speculative money from the West," said Malcolm Freeman, a director at UK broker Kingdom Futures.

"With nervousness creeping into the equities globally and the shiny world of Bitcoin starting to become tarnished, it looks like the markets could be in for a bumpy ride," he added.