Surat to get diamonds straight from Botswana mines
Sunday, 20 June 2010
NEW DELHI, June 19 (Commodity Online): India's diamond city Surat received a good news this week when Botswana's visiting Vice-president Mompati S Merafhe said India may soon be able to source rough diamonds directly from Botswana, the largest diamond producers in the world, cutting out all the middlemen as the two nations are chalking out modalities on the issue.
Surat is the world's biggest diamond processing city which has over 0.5 million people polishing rough diamonds. It generates a revenue of Rs 800 billion per annum from the diamond business. However, Surat is mainly depended on middlemen to get diamond roughs for polishing. The City polishes almost 8 diamonds out of ten in the world.
Early this year, Indian vice-president Hamid Ansari visited Botswana with an effort to lay the ground work to faciliatate more procurement of rough diamonds by Indian companies from Botswana diretly, rather than through middlemen.
During the visit, an agreement was inked between the two side and it was expected that actual direct sourcing of uncut diamonds from Botswana would be possible after two years when the then existing contract for distributing mining and rough diamond came to an end.
The Botswana government also showed interest in diversifying the sellers of its diamonds, rather than going through a single company as they saw that De Beers was unable to take all the diamonds mined due to a decline in demand during the global economic slowdown.
At present, Botswana's diamond mining industry is dominated by Debswana, a joint venture between De beers and the Botswana government. It is expected that if India could establish direct relationships with diamond supplying country, it will definitely provide potential growth for the Indian diamond manufacturers in the near future.
Surat is the world's biggest diamond processing city which has over 0.5 million people polishing rough diamonds. It generates a revenue of Rs 800 billion per annum from the diamond business. However, Surat is mainly depended on middlemen to get diamond roughs for polishing. The City polishes almost 8 diamonds out of ten in the world.
Early this year, Indian vice-president Hamid Ansari visited Botswana with an effort to lay the ground work to faciliatate more procurement of rough diamonds by Indian companies from Botswana diretly, rather than through middlemen.
During the visit, an agreement was inked between the two side and it was expected that actual direct sourcing of uncut diamonds from Botswana would be possible after two years when the then existing contract for distributing mining and rough diamond came to an end.
The Botswana government also showed interest in diversifying the sellers of its diamonds, rather than going through a single company as they saw that De Beers was unable to take all the diamonds mined due to a decline in demand during the global economic slowdown.
At present, Botswana's diamond mining industry is dominated by Debswana, a joint venture between De beers and the Botswana government. It is expected that if India could establish direct relationships with diamond supplying country, it will definitely provide potential growth for the Indian diamond manufacturers in the near future.