Botswana, De Beers working on ‘finer’ details of new diamond sale deal – report

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi said his government and De Beers are still negotiating on “finer” details of a long overdue new diamond-sales deal.
“We are just fine-tuning, but we will strike a deal,” Bloomberg quoted Masisi as saying in an interview in Marrakech, Morocco. 
“It is imperative that a deal gets struck because it is in the interests of both parties.”
A 10-year sales agreement ended in December 2020 and was first extended to June 2022 and recently to June 2023.
De Beers brought the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) to Botswana under the current deal, which also saw paved the way for the country to receive 15% of the total Debswana output for sale by the state-owned Okavango Diamond Company.
Debswana is a 50/50 joint venture between De Beers and the Botswana government.
Masisi said Botswana wants adjustments in the terms of the joint venture, coupled with the additional investment in the local diamond polishing and cutting industry to create more jobs and grow the economy.
“It’s really value addition, so the resources you have been mining, we want to use our knowledge base to yield greater returns,” he said.
“That’s the conversation De Beers and ourselves are talking about.”

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished