The platinum price, which climbed above $1000 an ounce in the past three weeks, will bring relief to mining companies, but it may be too little too late.In 2011 during the commodities boom, platinum peaked at $1,903 but by January this year it had fallen to $818.The industry is battling to recover in the wake of expensive and unsuccessful projects, two strikes in two years and mismanagement of capital.Added to this is that demand from China is still weak and there is a continued oversupply of platinum in the market.But there has been some relief in terms of the metal's price.Hurbey Geldenhuys, platinum analyst at Vunani Securities, said this week that the primary and short-term reason for the higher prices was the weaker US dollar and the stronger gold price because there was a correlation between gold and platinum prices.He said that long-term platinum prices were going to increase, depending on the demand-supply effect.  With the platinum mining index on the JSE up about 101%, the sector is still down around 59% since 2011 "They [platinum miners] will breathe a sigh of relief at these levels. The average basket price that the miners will receive is probably now at the highest it's been in the past 12 months," he said.But Ryan Seaborne, an analyst at 36One Asset Management, said: "The demand for underlying metals, whether it's precious metals or base metals, is mostly driven by speculation by the Chinese traders and it's very short-lived."He said he did not believe the supply-demand issues for PGMs (platinum group metals) had changed. The market was still oversupplied and would remain so for the next few years.The platinum price dropped to about $830 in the second half of last year because of slower demand from China. The price weakened from June last year to January this year, before picking up and rising 16%.story_article_left1Whether the latest price persuades companies to revise their production guidance upwards for the year is unlikely; price alone is not enough."It's a short-lived phenomenon; these companies are in a lot of trouble," said Seaborne. "They might be given short-term relief, but it's not a fundamental change of business."Geldenhuys agreed that the better platinum price would not result in changes to the companies' production guidance forecasts for the year.He said most of the mining companies had delayed capital expenditure and maintenance and would focus on that first before increasing production.The higher platinum price might be a double-edged sword for mining companies because unions were likely to use the gains in the price to negotiate for higher wages, especially if companies reported higher profits.Seaborne and Geldenhuys said that if rising prices persisted, unions would definitely use this to argue for higher pay when entering the wage negotiations.But even though there have been gains for the sector since January, with the platinum mining index on the JSE up about 101%, the sector is still down around 59% since 2011...