DIAMOND BUSINESS SPARKLES AGAIN

IT IS NOT JUST SURAT’S TEXTILE INDUSTRY that has made a comeback. Its famed diamond industry is also hitting last year’s revenues and expanding its business. Take diamantaire Arjan Bambaliya. From a less than 2000-sq-ft diamond polishing unit on the second floor of a commercial building in Katargam in Surat, he has recently gone on to rent an entire floor in an adjacent building. Post Diwali, he has also upped the number of his employees to 75, from less than 50 before the pandemic. His workers are now earning at least 20 per cent more than their pre-covid salaries.

“When the lockdown ended, we were in throes of mounting inventory and cancelled orders. However, as overseas markets began opening up and clients realised we could honour orders, things started improving,” says Bambaliya.

Nine out of 10 diamonds in the world are polished in Surat, and the roughly 6,000 diamond polishing units here employ a workforce of over 700,000, clocking an annual turnover of $24 billion or ~1.7 trillion.

According to Dinesh Navadia, industry veteran and regional chairman of the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, not only did Surat’s diamond industry tide over the lockdown by working on a long-pending inventory of over $2 billion, it has seen a spurt in demand and exports since November last year. The cut and polished diamond exports in November and December 2020 stood at over ~12,000 crore, up from roughly ~8,000-~9,000 crore over the same period in 2019.