Diamond Market To Normalise End-2010

Admittedly, a year-on-year sales comparison would be coming off a very low base when the diamond market was going through one of its toughest periods in decades. The global economic slump curtailed demand for luxury goods in the Western markets and financing dried up.

Diamond production by the De Beers group dropped 49% to 24.6m carats during 2009, while the value of diamond sales by marketing the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) fell 46 percent to $3.23bn.