The countries that are leading in the global diamond production, cutting&polishing and trading are widely viewed as the world diamond centres. Diamond mining countries, cutting&polishing centres and rough and polished diamond trade hubs are among them.
Beneficiary countries
Besides the pool of the BRANCS countries – Botswana, Russia, Angola, Namibia, Canada and South Africa – where a cutting&polishing industry is developing in addition to the rough diamond production, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo could be added to the top diamond mining countries in terms of the diamond production. These top 8 countries account for 95 per cent of the global diamond production.
Top miners’ diamond production, imports and exports in 2015-2016
The analysis of the above data shows that the leading diamond mining countries mainly export rough diamonds and this is the only way they participate in the diamond trade. Russia and Botswana are the exceptions as they also sell their rough diamonds via diamond exchanges set up in their countries. That said, Botswana sells the goods in more significant quantity due to the re-export of the rough diamonds produced in the neighbouring African countries via the Gaborone diamond exchange.
It should be noted that the volume of diamonds cut and polished in the beneficiary countries by their own cutting operations is not as significant as that in India and Israel that are traditional diamond cutting centres.
