China's Zijin Mining sees More Buys Abroad in 2009

Zijin Mining intends to step up the pace of international acquisitions next year after holding back on acquisitions as commodity prices rose, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

The gold miner has diversified over the last few years into copper, and will take into account the minerals that China needs to import when evaluating targets, Chen Jinghe told reporters.

"We've been pretty conservative in acquisitions, and I am feeling good about that," Chen said at the China Mining conference.

"I think upcoming acquisitions will exceed those of the recent past."

Plunging prices of commodities and of foreign miners' shares has opened opportunities for Chinese firms, which tend to hold a lot of cash and are able to raise more funding through loans from Chinese banks and from a developing domestic corporate bond market.

Shares of Chinese firms have not been immune to the global sell-off. Zijin's Hong Kong-listed stock has lost 81% this year, and in October hit its lowest point since the end of 2005.

Gold prices have also fallen this year, softening to $736.70 an ounce on Wednesday after briefly exceeding $1,000 an ounce in March, but have held up better than many other metals.

Zijin will also look domestically, although few available domestic mines are big enough to meet its goals, Chen said.

The company owns the Rio Blanco copper project in Peru, mines gold in Tajikistan, and owns a stake in a Philippine gold project. It was in talks this year for new Tajik projects and was looking at mines in Africa.

By Lucy Hornby, Reuters.