BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Feb 4 (Reuters) - China has started buying copper from domestic bonded warehouses and overseas markets as a move to gradually triple its state reserve to about 1 million tonnes, trade sources familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.
The country's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) holds about 300,000 tonnes in copper stockpiles, the sources said.
One of the sources said it could target 1 million tonnes in total, reinforcing the remarks of a smelter source who told Reuters in December that the SRB could buy at least 700,000 tonnes of the metal.
Copper inventories in a major SRB warehouse in Shanghai increased by about 10,000 tonnes last week, when the whole country was celebrating the Lunar New Year and financial markets were closed, two sources said.
The move was partly due to limited inventories available from Chinese domestic copper smelters, the sources said, in line with a comment by an executive at the country's top smelter in January.