Infact, according to Tiffany's Vice President James Fernandez who was in Botswana last week, Rand Diamonds is going ahead with building its close to US$5 million (P35 million) factory adjacent to Diamond Trading Company (DTC) Botswana in Gaborone. Rand Diamonds, which is the only diamond cutting and polishing company with a Motswana shareholder, plans to complete the plant by March 2011.According to businessman McLean Letshwiti, who owns a 25-percent stake in Rand Diamonds, unlike other sightholders who responded to falling demand and income by retrenching, his company had not done so."We have not retrenched like the others, and we going ahead with all our original plans," Letshwiti, who is also Board Chairman of Rand Diamonds, said.
These assurances come against the backdrop of the Tiffany Group's worldwide net sales decline by 18 percent because of a slowdown in consumer spending, especially in the US - its biggest market - in the first quarter of 2009.
