Russia has finally opened its books today, disclosing rough diamond exports and other diamond data to comply with Kimberley Process requirements, revealing surprising information. For instance, that it’s the world’s largest producer by weight. Another surprise is in the dollar value of exports, which are off the scale and probably wrong.
Until today it was believed Botswana was the world's leading diamond source. It is in terms of value, but with 33 million carats in exports last year, Russia tops the list, followed by Botswana with 29 million carats.
However, with an average price of $51 per carat, Russia trails the African country that gets an average of $60 per carat. That does not mean that Russian mined goods are less valuable, but rather that the better goods are sold to local manufacturers while the less valuable goods are exported, according to the Russian Finance Ministry.
Conversely, the country said it mined 17.763 million carats between January and June of this year with an estimated value of $948 million. This brings the average per carat value to $53.
Belgium, the U.K. and Israel are the leading destinations for Russian rough. Antwerp bought $165.3 billion worth of the goods during the first half of 2004, and another $81.2 billion were shipped to London the Finance Ministry said.
Israel, according to the data, imported from Russia rough valued at $31.6 billion during the first half of 2004, after importing $81.9 billion of goods in 2003.
These figures do not tally up, however, with statistics provided by the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor which gives a figure for rough imports in the first six months of this year of $2.63 billion, and $3.892 billion in 2003.
Antwerp bought $641.5 billion worth of goods in 2003, and another $118.8 billion were exported to British buyers in 2003. Again, these values are out of proportion.
According to industry analyst Chaim Even-Zohar’s diamond pipeline, Russia mined $1.61 billion worth of diamonds in 2003.
More data is expected to be posted on the Finance Ministry’s website.
Russia is disclosing statistics on the recovery, import and export of diamonds following international demand and public scrutiny by NGOs that pushed the measure through a lengthy approval process.
