In April 2012 the average export price per carat of polished diamonds declined. This trend was continued in May 2012, AWDC reports. The average price decreased from 1,600 U.S. dollars in April 2012 to 1,502 U.S. dollars in May 2012.
The U.S. dollar value of exports of polished diamonds in May 2012 declined 15.13% to 1,180,706,254 U.S. dollar compared to May 2011 when it equalled 1,391,206,831 U.S. dollar.
In volume terms, AWDC also noted a decrease. Compared to a year earlier, we can see a decline of 20.58% from 839,371 carats in May 2011 to 666,613 carats in May 2012.
Although we see a decrease of 21.47% in volume terms during January – May 2012 compared to January – May 2011, this translated in a small decline of only 2.38% in value terms. When we take a closer look at the import figures of polished diamonds, we can see the same trend. In May 2012, the U.S. dollar value of imported polished diamonds dropped 14.55% to 1,026,782,464
U.S. dollar compared to a year earlier. In volume terms we saw a decrease of 25.04% to 680,278 carats. While we saw an import of 4,007,160 carats polished diamonds from January to May 2011, we noted 3,434,211 imported carats from January to May 2012, which implies a decline of 14.30% in volume terms. In value terms however, this equals a 4.77% rise compared to a year earlier to 5,670,656,068 U.S. dollar.
When we study the export figures of rough diamonds in May 2012, we see a decrease of 27.78% in volume terms and a decrease of 21.81% in value terms compared to May 2011. This resulted in 7,314,285 carats of exported rough diamonds worth 1,150,661,704 U.S. dollar. During the five first months of 2012, we noted a 14.08% decline in volume terms to 44,085,355 carats compared to the first five months in 2011. In value terms, this resulted in a smaller 2.76% decline to 5,955,048,382 U.S. dollar.
The import figures of rough diamonds also made a downfall compared to exactly one year ago.
In May 2011 we saw a value of 1,405,160,992 U.S. dollar while in May 2012 this figure equaled 1,110,631,372 U.S. dollar, which implies a drop of 20.96%. In volume terms we noted a decrease of 26.40%.
From January to May 2012 the rough import figures showed a decline of 16.19% in volume terms but only a 0.39% decrease in value, compared to the first five months in 2011.
Alex Shishlo, Editor in Chief of the European Bureau, Rough&Polished
