De Beers Half-Year Sales Down

The company's chairman Nicky Oppenheimer unveiled that total sales for the first half of 2007 made US $3.4 billion (about P21 billion) compared to US $3.6 billion (about P22.4 billion) at the same time last year.

However, Oppenheimer said the reduction in sales was mainly due to continued investments of US $2 billion (about P12.4 billion) new mining programmes, as well as the establishment of new sales and marketing operations in southern Africa (Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa), he said.