Listed Mining Companies
By: Martin Creamer
22nd October 2007
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Mogae said that, “for the first time”, diamond cutting and diamond polishing were now taking place in Botswana.
He said that a total of 16 cutting-and-polishing houses had been licensed and six of them were already operational. The remaining ten would be operational in the next three years.
“That’s a very important and ambitious project. We aim to be a diamond centre no less than, and comparable to, Antwerp, Jerusalem and Mumbai,” he said.
While Botswana was not asking the cutting-and-polishing houses to move their works to Botswana, it was requesting them to include Botswana as one of the places where they cut and polished diamonds.
The country was not even saying that they should cut and polish all the diamonds that Botswana sold to them in Botswana itself.
“But what we are saying is that, since they have facilities in New York, London, Antwerp, Mumbai, Thailand and so on, they should also have facilities here,” he said.
As a diamond-dependent country, Botswana would be the last to do anything to disrupt global diamond trade.
While Botswana cared about its own diamonds and its own diamond industry, it also cared about the international diamond industry.
“We work within the rules of the international community, that’s why we are co-founders of the so-called Kimberley Process,” he told Mining Weekly Online, following a celebration to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jwaneng, the world’s richest diamond mine.
Botswana accounts for some 25% of the $13,1-billion worth of rough diamonds produced each year and diamonds account for 70% of the country’s export earnings.
Debswana, the Botswana government-De Beers joint venture company, owns a 15% in De Beers, in which the London-listed Anglo American plc has a 45% interest.
Edited by: Martin Creamer
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