TROUGH YEAR

Standard Bank international mining and metals head Rajat Kohli, above, and his team consider 2015 a trough year for commodity prices. On a three-year view, the bank favours precious metals over base metals and bulks. It puts the rise in the dollar gold price to 2018 on a steeper upward curve than copper and coal and has the iron-ore price at a flat $70/t for the next three years. The amber light the bank issued last year remains firmly on for 2015, but with pockets of positive gold-sector activity. Kohli predicted that private capital for mining would grow further with lack of funding bringing buyers and sellers together as the buyer-seller price gap narrows.