By Koh Gui Qing
SYDNEY, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A sharp revival in the cost of shipping bulk commodities could portend a rally in the Australian dollar as sagging demand for the country's resource exports finally finds a floor.
Analysts said there are signs appetite for commodities may be picking up after the Baltic index, which gauges the costs to ship commodities between countries, spiked 49 percent in the last week to its highest in over three months.
This bodes well for the Aussie dollar since the index is seen as a barometer of global demand for Australia's bulk exports, such as iron ore, coal and wheat.
"There is some correlation between the two, and it is one of the things that you would look at as a guide to the commodities cycle," said Greg Gibbs, currency strategist at ABN AMRO.
"We can take it that conditions have improved for commodity currencies."
In the space of just six months last year, the Baltic index collapsed over 90 percent from a record high of 11,793 points struck in May as the meltdown in financial markets knocked down demand for commodities.
The Aussie trailed behind showing a close correlation from late July to early October. It dived 40 percent in just over three months from a 25-year high of $0.9849.
Gibbs said the Aussie, a play on the world's demand for commodities because natural resources account for more than half of Australia's sales abroad, could tick up to between $0.6800-$0.7270 in the coming weeks, from $0.6690 currently.
Over the past two years there has been a 64 percent correlation between the key shipping index and the Aussie, according to Reuters data.
CHINA FACTOR
Brokers said the recent spike in the Baltic index was largely due to China resuming its iron ore imports after running through its build-up of iron ore stockpiles.
The index gauges the cost of shipping resources such as iron ore, cement, grain, coal and fertiliser on major export routes, and is a leading indicator of economic vitality.
Although the recovery is modest -- the index is still 86 percent below a record high struck in May -- it has stirred hopes among investors of a quick recovery in China's economy that would shield Asia from a long recession.
Optimism over China's economy helped Chinese stocks jump almost 10 percent last week.
While it is far from clear commodities demand will recover steadily from here, analysts said investors can probably take comfort that weak demand has found a floor after the sharp dives in commodity prices last year.
This could prevent the Aussie from re-testing 5-1/2-year lows of $0.6004 struck back in October.
"The market has built in all this bad news and low rates in Australia are more than factored in now," said David de Garis, a senior economist at National Australia Bank who expects the Aussie to gain to $0.7200 by March.
"It's going to take another raft of extremely negative news on the global economy and commodity prices, or markets pricing in deeper cuts in domestic interest rates to unseat the Aussie dollar from here," de Garis said.
In the past two weeks, investors have tempered their expectations of future interest rate cuts in Australia, betting the central bank will ease more modestly from now on after cutting four percentage points in five months. (Editing by Kazunori Takada)