India, China to corner 30 percent each of diamond business

SURAT - India and China are expected to share almost 30 percent of the world’s diamond and gems business each by 2020, says Roger Lorie, chief executive of the International Gemological Institute (IGI) Worldwide.

The world’s diamond business would shift from the West to the East in the next 10 years or even earlier. “I give it a decade but it may happen even sooner” because of the global economic downturn, Lorie said here Thursday.

“In India too, diamond has gained at the expense of gold. Until two years ago, the country was the world’s largest gold consumer with about 90 per cent of the jewellery business being in the yellow metal. It is now at 50 per cent each for gold and diamond,”

said Lorie, a renowned diamond expert.

The single biggest factor behind the growth of diamond business in India was the rise domestic consumption.

“India has an amazing capacity to put bad memories behind it and move ahead. The Surat diamond trade which had pressed the panic buttons an year ago is today moving full steam ahead with cutting and polishing units working full flow and actually facing a paucity of manpower,” said Lorie.

According to him, between April 2009 and February 2010, Surat exported $16.2 billion worth of cut and polished diamonds and imported $8.6 billion worth of rough diamonds.

Lorie thinks Surat would supply high-cut diamonds to China, Hong Kong and most of the southeast Asian countries.

“India excels in all three spheres - manufacturing, trading and consumption - unlike China which consumes more diamonds than it manufactures,” he added.