Delivering welcome address, Chairman of GJEPC Mr. Praveenshankar Pandya said, “The event would tackle both opportunities and challenges facing the industry, among them marketing, compliance and finance.
He called on Mr. Piyush Goyal, India’s mining minister, who also addressed the opening session – to enable the development of India’s two prospective diamond mines. “We want to be able to extract the diamonds we manufacture and export,” Pandya said.
Mr. Pandya encouraged the industry to work collectively toward higher polished prices, noting the pressure facing the midstream in recent years.
The banks are wary because prices are not rising, and sometimes there has been excessive supply, leading to high interest rates from banks, he explained. There has to be a realignment, Mr. Pandya warned, calling for greater cooperation between the miners and the trade. He also endorsed the work of the Diamond Producers Association, urging miners to provide it with financial support so it could successfully increase demand.
India’s minister of power, coal and renewable energy and mines, Mr. Piyush Goyal, who was the chief guest of the event, assured his Zimbabwean counterpart, Mr. Walter Chidakwa, that India would work in the coming year to ensure the safety of the people of Africa. India will never think of exploiting Africa, but will work to supplement it, he said.
Mr. Goyal also expressed a desire to change the current environment in which miners have concerns about operating in India. “This is an area where India plans to change the rules of the game,” Goyal said. “We’re going to explore the breadth of this country with an honest, transparent bidding process, and the proceeds will go to the poor of this country. We don’t want to say we ran out of diamonds in the 18th century, but that in India, diamonds are forever.”
Mr. Walter Chidakwa, Zimbabwe’s minister of mines and mining development, stressed that the industry must do more to ensure that Africa benefits from its resources, and appealed to India to support initiatives on the continent. Just as Belgium extended expertise and financial support to India’s trade, India should do the same for Africa’s diamond industry, the minister said.
Mr. Russell Mehta, vice chairman of the GJEPC pointed to the lack of significant profit margins in the manufacturing sector and cautioned that volatility was the new normal. He also predicted that synthetic diamonds would gain a share of the natural diamond market. Mehta stressed that the industry would have to embrace transparency and align with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push toward a cleaner economy, free of corruption.
Mr. Paul Rowley, executive vice president of global sightholder sales at De Beers, highlighted the need to raise consumer confidence by increasing transparency across the diamond pipeline. The industry needs to understand the end consumer and engage in providing information to ensure the industry supplies according to consumers’ exact needs, he asserted.
He defended De Beers against claims that it was squeezing midstream profitability, noting that times were challenging for the entire industry. De Beers had invested in its Forevermark brand in the hope that it would have a positive effect on the image of the whole industry.
“But we realized the industry needed more, which is why the company is investing in the Diamond Producers Association,” Mr. Rowley said.
While participating in a panel discussion, Mr. Rajiv Mehta, CEO of India-based diamond manufacturer Dimexon Diamonds argued. “Marketing of diamonds will only lead to more profits for rough producers and barely help the midstream other than by moving goods down the pipeline more efficiently. I don’t believe marketing is going to solve our profitability problems.”
Mr. Jim Pounds, executive vice president of Dominion Diamond Corporation said, “Better marketing would have a positive effect on the whole sector, while industry analyst Chaim Even-Zohar said diamond marketers needed to up their game significantly.
“If you see the Swarovski advertising, it’s scary. It’s so clever,” he said. “If you see some of the advertising videos the synthetic diamond producers make, if we were to play that here, everyone would walk out and go and buy synthetics.”
Mr. Andrey Polyakov, vice president of ALROSA and president of the World Diamond Council, dismissed the notion that synthetic diamonds held the same value as natural diamonds. The entire value of diamonds comes from their age and history, he argued, adding that synthetics had no geological history.
“Their producers cannot even claim that they are clones of something with worth. “Indeed, they are clones of something with no value at all,” he said.
