At the same time, fabrication usage including by makers of cars, jewelry and tableware will rise 2.9 percent this year to 890.7 million ounces, the most since 2005, CPM said. Silver content is increasing in vehicles with more electronics, according to Metals Focus Ltd., a London-based research company. After dropping last year, demand from electronics and battery makers will rebound in 2014, CPM forecasts.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp., based in San Jose, California, is working with companies that make silver sensors that can replace the widely-used iridium-tin-oxide sensors, founder and Chief Executive Officer Thurman Rodgers said on an April 17 conference call.

World Growth

Most industrial metals will get a boost from growth. The world economy expanded 2.1 percent in 2013 and will increase 2.8 percent this year and 3.1 percent in 2015, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. While that will help spur a 2.1 percent gain in industrial and photographic demand for silver, investors will sell 250 metric tons from funds backed by the metal, Barclays Plc estimates.

“Silver is not benefiting even though it has so much industrial use as people still call it a precious metal,” James Paulsen, the Minneapolis-based chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, which oversees about $357 billion in assets, said. “Its a tug of war between its safe-haven appeal and its use as industrial metal.”

Policy makers have cut monthly bond purchases four times, to $45 billion yesterday compared with $85 billion in November, and signaled that borrowing costs might climb as soon as next year. The U.S. economy will expand 2.7 percent this year, from 1.9 percent in 2013, and reach a 10-year high of 3 percent in 2015, economists said in a Bloomberg survey.

Hedge funds have cut their bets on higher silver prices by 90 percent in the past two months on the Comex in New York, holding a net-long position of 2,620 futures and options in the week to April 22, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. The five-year average is about 20,510 contracts.

ETP Investors

Exchange-traded-product investors are more positive, owning 19,668.8 metric tons valued at $12.13 billion. Holdings are up 1.5 percent this year and are 2.2 percent below the record reached in October. Gold ETP holdings are down down 24 percent in the past year and slid on April 21 to the lowest in more than four years, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Rising demand also may give prices a boost. European car sales advanced a seventh consecutive month in March, while cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. at a 16.3 million annualized rate in March, the fastest since May 2007, according to data from Ward’s Automotive Group. China’s passenger-vehicle sales jumped 7.9 percent in March.