Zimbabwe’s third diamond auction for 2018 has raked in $28 million realised from 423 066 carats, Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Winston Chitando has said.
The auction – the third to be conducted this year – attracted 32 buyers mainly from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
This year, Zimbabwe conducted two diamond auctions in February and April and the diamonds being auctioned are produced by Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Mining Company.
The recent successfully concluded auction in the country marks a huge stride for the nation to regain market confidence and claim a stake in the global diamond industry.
In August 2010, the US-based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network, an industry diamond price and information provider, vowed to expel any member who knowingly traded gems from Zimbabwe’s Marange fields — where it alleged that labourers have been killed and children enslaved.
The global stakeholders such as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the World Diamond Council and the African Diamond Producers’ Association are key watchdogs to ensure that there is sanity in the mining of diamond.
However, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme cleared Zimbabwe to resume the supervised export of diamonds from its troubled Marange field, in a deal brokered by the European Union.
According to the latest figures presented by Chitando for the sales tender number 3 conducted from August 28 to the 12th of September 2018, 423 066 carats were put on sale to local and international buyers drawn from the United Arab Emirates, India, Israel, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, Namibia and South Africa.
“The government realised $28 million from these sales, a huge jump from the test sales conducted in April this year,” said Chitando.
Additional tenders will be conducted between October and December this year, amid expectations that this trend will continue into next year as state owned diamond utility, the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) targets to utilise the high yield from its conglomerate plant to be commissioned by President Emmerson Mnangagwa later this year.
The ZCDC was formed in March 2016 after the Government evicted all diamond mining firms in the Chiadzwa fields after their licenses expired.
Some of the mining companies affected include Mbada Diamonds, Anjin Investments, Marange Resources, Diamond Mining Company, Jinan, RERA, Kusena and Gye-Nyame.
Since the beginning of the year, Zimbabwe produced nearly 1.8 million carats of diamonds, almost the same output for the whole of last year, the ZCDC said last month.
President Mnangagwa in May this year said the Government is in the process of formulating a new diamond policy, which will lead to the unbundling of the ZCDC to ensure more players are involved in the sector.
Apart from attracting new investments into the sector, the new policy would also ensure communities around the diamond fields benefit from the resource by imposing a legal requirement for meaningful corporate social responsibility programmes.
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