Diamond News Archives

(IDEX Online) - Alrosa's rough and polished sales hit their lowest point of the year in July, down to $334m (provisional) as demand outstripped supply.

Miners are struggling with inventories at record low levels, the company said today, reinforcing an earlier warning of a long period of "supply deficit". And prices are back to pre-Covid levels.

Total sales in July were down more than 18 per cent on June.  Last July, in the depths of the Covid crisis, Alrosa sold $35.8m.  In July 2019 it sold $170.5m.

"At the moment, the pricing policy presents the only solution to balancing demand and supply," said Evgeny Agureev, Alrosa's deputy CEO.

"By early August, our rough diamond prices have rebounded to the pre-crisis levels. As a responsible market player, Alrosa will seek to support the demand and supply balance by servicing the real demand only."

Pic courtesy Alrosa...

Things happen when markets try to second-guess central banks in a world where the old macro economic connections between inflation, growth and unemployment don’t seem to work as well as they used to.

Two Federal Reserve officials said on Monday that the U.S. economy is growing rapidly and that while the labor market still has room for improvement, inflation is already at a level that could satisfy one leg of a key test for the beginning of rate hikes.

(IDEX Online) - Russian authorities are investigating allegations of widespread tax fraud at jewelry factories, after production increased sharply - but employee numbers in the sector fell.

The governor of the Kostroma Province, home to 60 per cent of Russia's jewelry industry, is concerned that workers who returned after Covid lockdowns have not been registered, and tax is not being paid.

Sergey Sitnikov has instructed the local tax authority to audit large jewelry companies.

The number of diamond workers fell from 7,365 in the first half of 2019, to 5,727 in the first half of 2021, according to government figures supplied to the Regnum news agency.

But shipments from the province for the same periods soared from 11.7bn rubles ($159m) to 15.2bn ($206m).

The jewelry industry accounts for 18 per cent of the province's budget.

Pic shows Russian city of Kostroma...