[Ferro-Alloys.com] According to World Bank’s latest report, El Nino might bring unfavourable effect on domestic agriculture industry, yet favourable for mining industry. The report suggested that Indonesian nickel miners, generally shut down during the corresponding period, tend to carry out more production activities this year thanks to a drier weather.

The El Nino does have a positive effect on our company’s operations mainly because prolonged dry weather allows us to maintain operating in October or November, said Emmanuel Samson, Chief Financial Officer in Nickel Asia Corp. It’s expected to reach a record high of 19-million tones this year when the export volume of nickel ore was 17.9-million tones in 2014, the company’s H1 export has advanced 25 percent to 9.68-million tones benefiting from the dry condition, he added.

Philippine has been the largest nickel supplier to Chinese mainland after Indonesia carried out its export ban in 2014. The National Mineral Association stated that the 27 nickel deposits nationwide could meet the yearly demand of 25-million tones for export. And Nickel Asia, the country’s largest nickel producer, owned two nickel processing plants, two gold processing plants and one copper processing plant, the National Mines and Geosciences Buearu noted. From 2003 to 2012, the mining industry only contributed less one percent to Philippine Gross Domestic Production.

On the other hand, El Nino caused much trouble for the national agriculture industry. The Ministry of Agriculture noted that agricultural suffered a anticipated loss of USD64.4-million overall just from the primary period of the special phenomenon from June to August. However, the world Bank announced that although the global market threatened by the El Nino, given the sufficient supply of agricultural products and the not so close-knit prices between home and abroad, the farm products prices not expected to rise sharply, except for some individual markets inside.

• [Editor:Juan]