Copper fell on Monday as fears over possible credit rating downgrades in Europe stoked worries the region may take longer to pull out of its two-year sovereign debt crisis, dragging down global economic growth. The most-traded March copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange declined 1.3 percent to 53,580 yuan ($8,400) a tonne.
Prices tumbled almost 5 percent last week, the biggest weekly drop since the end of September. Futures have lost 25 percent of their value this year. Copper inventories in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose 9.4 percent from a week earlier, while stocks in warehouses monitored by the LME fell 825 tonnes to 381,250 tonnes, representing around a week's worth of global consumption.