By Glenys Sim Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Platinum advanced in Asia on reports U.S. lawmakers and the White House are “very, very close” to an agreement on a bill which may help the country’s automakers stave off bankruptcy. Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Banking Committee, speaking in an interview on PBS said negotiators were down to “one or two issues” before an agreement was reached. Automakers account for nearly two-thirds of global platinum consumption. “Platinum is mainly an industrial metal,” said Tetsuya Yoshii, vice president for derivative products at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. Platinum prices will be at “weak levels” if consumption isn’t there, he said. Platinum for immediate delivery rose as much as 2.2 percent to $831 an ounce, before trading at $827.50 an ounce at 9:34 a.m. Singapore time. The metal, used to make catalytic converters for car and truck exhaust systems, is down 46 percent this year as auto sales slumped. The metal for January delivery was up 2.5 percent at $833 an ounce in after-hours electronic trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. October-delivery platinum on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange gained 1.9 percent to 2,454 yen a gram ($826 an ounce) at 10:34 a.m. local time. General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have said they need at least $14 billion in combined aid to keep from running out of cash by early next year. Congressional Democrats unveiled a legislative proposal Dec. 8 to let the president appoint a so- called car czar to oversee industry restructuring. Gold Prices Immediate-delivery gold was little changed at $777.05 an ounce at 9:13 a.m. in Singapore, and gold for February delivery in New York added 0.3 percent to $776.50 an ounce. “The dollar has climbed so much within a few months against the euro that we might see a little bit of selling which may be a positive for gold but we won’t see the thousand dollar level we saw within this year,” Mizuho’s Yoshii said. The dollar was at $1.2912 euro from $1.2927 late yesterday in New York. Gold for October delivery added 1.3 percent to 2,306 yen a gram in Tokyo, and Shanghai gold for June delivery gained 0.9 percent to 171.62 yuan a gram ($776 an ounce). “Gold is a safe haven of course, but the world is not going to be in inflation, rather deflation, and in a deflation world, it’s hard to see money being pumped into the gold market,” said Yoshii. Among other precious metals for immediate delivery, silver rose 0.6 percent to $9.90 an ounce, and palladium was down 0.8 percent at $176.50 an ounce. To contact the reporter on this story: Glenys Sim in Singapore at gsim4@bloomberg.net

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