NEW YORK – Diamond sales growth isn’t expected to accelerate any time soon as demand from China continues to slump, according to the president of the World Diamond Council.
Global polished diamond sales used in jewelry will increase 4% a year until at least 2019, according to Andrey Polyakov, who is also a VP at Alrosa PJSC, Russia’s biggest diamond miner. This is essentially in line with Alrosa’s estimates for average annual polished sales growth in the past decade.
“We see stable growth,” Polyakov said Wednesday in an interview in New York, where the Council is based. He says the decrease in Chinese sales – a result of the country’s anti-corruption campaign – will be offset by stable demand from the US, Japan, the Indian middle class and in Europe, where Chinese tourists are supporting sales growth.
Rough-diamond prices dropped 18% in 2015 as slowing Chinese demand and an industrywide credit crunch curbed purchases. Sales of $520-million at a recent auction by De Beers, the world’s biggest supplier, raised hopes that the industry can avoid a second-half slowdown.