"At the current prices of $1,580 per tonne of copper at LME, no manufacturer in the world will be able to make profits", Wadhawan said.

The current prices of copper are perhaps the lowest in the century (considering the depreciation of dollar also), he said.

Copper prices had recently touched a 11-year low of $1,570 per tonne at the LME.

The downfall in copper prices was mainly due to the collapse of soviet economy and the economic crisis in south-east Asia.

Indian copper manufacturers have also faced the brunt of declining copper prices with country's largest copper manufacturer, Hindustan Copper Ltd in red for the past couple of years.

"Indian manufacturers would be the worst hit because of low percentage of coppercontent in the ore", he said.

Wadhawan, who was also the chairman and managing director of Hindustan Zinc Ltd from 1985 to 1996, said the cut-off level prices for the copper companies to break-even was in the range of $2,000-2,100 a tonne.

India was at a disadvantage compared to other copper manufacturing countries since the contribution from the by-product contained in copper ore (precious metal) towards cost of production of the metal was only 4-5 per cent as against 25-40 per cent in other parts of the world.

On other non-ferrous metals, he said, India would be the fastest growing market for these metals along With China.

Demand in the developed economies has virtually saturated and it is only developing countries from where the demand for non-ferrous metals comes, he added.

With a projected economic growth of six to eight per cent demand for these metals was poised for a rapid growth in the next couple of years, he said.