Indian imports of Russian rough diamonds fall 15% by volume, 39% by value in 2024
MOSCOW. March 13 (Interfax) - Indian imports of rough diamonds from Russia dropped 15% to 5.74 million carats in 2024 from 6.8 million carats a year earlier, India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry reported.
By value, these imports plunged 39% to $664 million last year from $1.093 billion in 2023. The average price of Russian diamonds imported by India fell 28% to $115.70 per carat in 2024 from $160.70 the previous year.
India's total rough diamond imports fell 23% to 117.5 million carats in 2024. The diamond industry is in the middle of a protracted crisis, although Russian diamond miner Alrosa expects demand to recover and prices to turn around in the next few months as diamond cutters' inventories normalize.
The largest suppliers of rough diamonds to India by value are still the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Hong Kong and Belgium. Hong Kong, which lagged behind Russia by the volume of diamond shipments before 2022, is continuing to increase its share, although shipments fell 24% in 2024. Imports from the UAE and Belgium fell 12% and 30%, respectively, to $7.95 billion and $2.16 billion.
Imports from Russia started falling year-on-year last April. Prior to that they were up 130% year-on-year to 728,000 carats in March, 85% to 1.81 million carats in February and 14% to 400,000 carats in January 2024, which market players attributed to a sell-off of inventory before G7 sanctions against Russian diamonds went into effect.
The second phase of G7 sanctions against Russian gemstones went into effect on March 1, 2024. A direct ban on imports of rough and cut diamonds directly from Russia was imposed on January 1, 2024 and on March 1 it was extended to cut diamonds upward of 1 carat cut from Russian rough diamonds in third countries. This is the most painful measure in the sanctions imposed by the G7 countries, which account for 70% of the world's retail cut diamond market.
India is the largest diamond cutter in the world, producing 90% of all cut diamonds, primarily small ones, for which Russian stones were traditionally the raw material.