The SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry says businesses and law-enforcement bodies regard the theft of copper cable and electricity as serious offences that harm national security.
The chamber's monthly copper theft "barometer" rose to 15.84 points last month, from 14.37 in June.
The high-speed Gautrain service has been affected in the past few weeks by cable theft. Services between Pretoria and parts of Johannesburg had to be temporarily halted.
The copper price has fallen from almost R72000 a ton last month to less than R65000 this month.
The chamber said that from December last year to April the international price of copper had hovered in the range of R68000 to R72000 a ton.
The downgrading of the US's credit rating, and concerns about Italian and French debt, it said, had shaken market confidence and depressed the current and future price of copper.
"The oversupply of copper and poor demand from the world economy is likely to further reduce the profitability of the illegal copper trade," the chamber said.
But First Quantum Minerals president Clive Newall said yesterday that the price of copper was likely to remain high over the next 12 months, even as commodity prices fell on worries of a global economic slowdown.
Newall said that, because of a fragile world economy, all commodity prices would be volatile for the next 12 months, with a higher likelihood of dropping.
"However, copper is an increasingly scarce element with ever-rising costs of production and no signs of any significant new substitution possibilities," he said.
He said that, though a proposed electricity-cost increase in Zambia would raise copper production costs, that would not alter First Quantum's investment plans.
Newall's company mines metals in Zambia and Mauritania. - I-Net Bridge and Reuters
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