IDEX Polished Price Index: Another Hefty Fall During July
August 03, 23
(IDEX Online) - Polished diamond prices suffered another hefty fall during July as geopolitical uncertainties continued to cast a dark shadow over the diamond market.
The IDEX Polished Price Index has been losing an average of 1.8 per cent a month over the last year.
During July it fell by 2.57 per cent, a slight improvement on June's 3.04 per cent drop, the worst since the current decline began last February.
De Beers announced a further steep drop in rough sales last month - despite significant price reductions - down almost 36 per cent to $410m, its lowest figure since May 2021.
And India is braced for a 15 per cent drop in overall gem and jewelry exports this year amid rising interest rates, inflation, and a lack of consumer confidence.
Manufacturers are reducing their inventory of natural diamonds, playing a wait-and-see game as rough prices decline, and increasingly turning instead to lab growns.
The Index is still in steep decline. It levelled during Covid but climbed throughout 2021 and until March 2022 when the Covid bubble bursting and Russia invaded Ukraine. The Index has been dropping ever since, suffering its biggest monthly fall in June (3.04 per cent).
Month-to-month prices slumped by 2.9 per cent during July, their biggest drop of the current decline. Figures for previous months had indicated something of a slowdown, down 1.7 per cent in June, 1.9 per cent in May and 2.1 per cent in April. The rate of decline slowed from December 2022 to March 2023.
Year-on-year prices for July also hit another low, down 19.9 per cent, compared to 18.9 per cent in June and 18.1 per cent in May. Year-on-year prices have been in decline since April 2022 and have been below zero since December.
Polished month-on-month prices fell for all sizes shown below in July, and by more than they did the previous month, with the exception of 4.0-cts. The price of 0.5-cts goods fell most sharply, down 4.6 per cent (down 2.6 per cent in June). 4.0-cts suffered the smallest loss, down 0.7 per cent (down 0.9 per cent in June).
Year-on-year prices for July fell sharply again, maintaining a long-established trend. All goods up to 2.0-cts are now down at least 20 per cent on last year's prices. As with the month-on-month prices above, all sizes shown saw bigger drops than in June, except for 4.0-cts goods (down 8.2 per cent compared with 8.7 per cent in June).
Prices for all sizes shown below kept on falling in June, as they have been for more than a year, even among 4.0-cts goods, which have shown some increases in recent months.
