According to www.mineweb.com, Indian diamond merchants are eager to extend a warm welcome to Zimbabwe's vast stores of rough stones. At a Kimberly Process meeting in Jerusalem, India advocated the lifting of a suspension on the export of rough diamonds from the Marange diamond field. Diamond industry players and human rights activists who were present at the meet said the Indian contingent, also present, let their economic considerations outweigh ethical ones.
This is significant given that an Indian firm, Surat Rough Diamond Sourcing India Ltd (SRDSIL) and representatives of Zimbabwe Diamond Consortium (ZDC) recently signed a $1.2 billion deal in Harare.
The consortium of diamond barons from Surat in Gujrat, India, have agreed to provide a steady demand for polished stones to Zimbabwe's concerned authorities. The deal will see the Gujrat-based diamond industry providing training facilities to create 1,000 skilled diamond polishing artisans in Zimbabwe. Traders insist they are well equipped for the task as more than 90% of the world's diamonds are said to be cut and polished in Surat.
The Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe are regarded as the world's biggest diamond find in more than a century. They are also a source of blood diamonds.
On September 11, 2010, Zimbabwe auctioned diamonds from the controversial Marange mines. There was little international condemnation, especially compared to the controversy over the first sale of Marange diamonds in August. And there was none from India.
Diamond traders in Mumbai maintain that Zimbabwe diamonds have a huge market in the northern belt of the country such as Delhi, Punjab, Chandigarh and other centres like China, Hong Kong and UAE. There is no way there could be any discouragement from the Indian side, they insist.
Rajiv Jain, chairman of the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, was of the opinion that if Zimbabwe would want to export its diamonds to India, it would be an added bonus to Indian diamentaires, given the large quantity of stones available. ``And if we don't bring them here, they could well land up in China or elsewhere, and as a consequence, our polishing and cutting value gets eroded,'' he said.
According to Zimbabwean government, the country was propelled to the number one spot as the world's most important player in rough diamond mining. The 40 million carats diamond production per year from the Marange field will earn about $ 2 billion in revenue.
Diamond barons from Surat insist that they directly source rough diamonds in huge quantites from Zimbabwe. ``For us, Zimbabwe is a promising market for roughs and we want to bring all the stocks to Surat," the company spokesperson said.
Members of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme failed to reach a consensus on whether to allow Zimbabwe to export Marange diamonds without oversight or restrictions. Delegates from at least 75 countries ended the four-day meet in Jerusalem deadlocked over whether to allow Zimbabwe to sell diamonds from the controversial Marange field in eastern Manicaland province.
As Zimbabwe recovers from a crisis situation, diamond revenues could provide the country with well-deserved resources. The Marange mine in eastern Zimbabwe is the most recently discovered (2006) of the country's three major diamond fields and already produces six million carats per year. Its discovery unleashed a diamond rush of 15,000 to 20,000 unlicensed artisanal miners and uncontrolled smuggling.
The Kimberley Process has suspended diamond trading out of Marange for the last year, after its own investigators confirmed the corruption, smuggling, and abusive military control of the fields.
Incidentally, the minister of mines of Zimbabwe, Obert Mpofu, was warmly welcomed in Mumbai recently. The Indian cutting and polishing industry considers the Marange fields a crucial source of supply in the coming years. The Zimbabwe Diamond Technology Centre under construction in Mt Hampden just outside Harare, has also attracted the attention of Indian diamond cutting and polishing companies.
A delegation from the centre, which was part of the Zimbabwe contingent at the recently concluded Mines to Market International Diamond Conference in Mumbai, said it had met scores of investors at the spot.
Maggie Burt, an executive of the centre who had travelled to India for the meet, added that the interest in diamonds from Zimbabwe was phenomenal. So, India could well be a potential weigh-station where Marange diamonds can be cleansed of the taint of Zimbabwe, before they are sold on the US market, where they are banned by trade sanctions.
