For many decades, the gold mining industry of the Soviet Union remained one of the largest in the world holding the well-balanced second place after South Africa in terms of gold output. From 1991, the industry started to decay, when instead of ten large territorial enterprises of Russia there emerged over 600 subsoil using companies mining from their first tens of kilos to 1.5-2.0 tons of metal per year. Naturally, such businesses could neither maintain geological exploration nor gold mining in the country.
Strategically located to the western coast of Southern Africa, Angola is the third largest and one of the most mineral potentially endowed and blessed country in sub-Saharan Africa. Angola said 8.6 million carats were mined by the formal sector in 2007. Endiama (Empresa de Diamantes de Angola) is the national diamond company of Angola founded in 1981 and it is the exclusive concessionary of mining rights in the domain of diamonds. Our agency had a possibility to address a couple of questions to the Head of Department of Strategical Planning and Investments, Tiago Dias.
Avi Paz, President of the Israel Diamond Exchange, was born in 1946 into a family of Belgian diamantaires. In 1971, he started trading in diamonds and became a member of the Israel Diamond Exchange. He is also the owner and general manager of Paz Avi Fancy Ltd, a diamond processing enterprise established in 1977, which was the first company in Israel to produce fancy cut diamonds. Avi Paz turned to be President of the Exchange in 2005. Recently he was elected for the second term. During the recent World Diamond Congress in Shanghai, Avi Paz was elected new President of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses.
The creation of the Namibian Diamond Trading Company (NDTC) is based on a 50x50 partnership between the Government of the Republic of Namibia and De Beers. The agreement, which resulted in the creation of the company, was signed in January 2007 and holds immense possibilities for the country in terms of the economic activity such a venture, is expected to generate. The purpose of the NDTC is to make diamonds available for sale in Namibia for local manufacturing. Shihaleni Ellis Ndjaba is the CEO of Namibian Diamond Trading Company (NDTC). Until January 2008 he was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Works, Transport and Communication.
The abrupt jump in prices for large-size and high-quality rough diamonds has triggered heated polemics in the professional medium. Key mining companies’ representatives point to the following unbiased reasons: the necessity to switch over to underground mining substantially contributing to cost increase and the shrinking share of high-quality rough in the current mining pattern due to depletion of major primary deposits.
Almost all professional diamond marketers have no doubts that rough prices will continue to rise in the near future. However, no one is ready to give an accurate forecast as to the extent the rough quality will push the prices up. Analysts and spokesmen of large companies confine themselves to general enunciations similar to the one recently expressed by the Rio Tinto representatives that “between 2008 and 2016 the demand for diamonds will significantly exceed their supply.” Meanwhile, the polished diamonds market displayed a peculiar trend: large high-quality diamonds sharply rose in prices (from 10% to 15% for the excellent grade stones of 1 to 3 carats and above), whereas prices for small diamonds were virtually left unchanged. It looks like this time diamond dealers have taken the lead and one cannot but agree there is some logic in this strategy.