‘Ethical diamond businesses still able to access funding’: De Beers CEO

Surat: Despite diamantaires in the world’s largest diamond cutting and polishing centre facing severe cash crunch following the banks squeezing credits to the small, medium and big diamond companies in the wake of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) bank fraud by Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, CEO of De Beers Group Bruce Cleaver believes that there is a good demand for rough diamonds and that the good businesses are still able to access the funding they require.
During his recent visit to Mumbai, TOI had sent a questionnaire to Cleaver on the current developments in the diamond industry. Replying to TOI query, Cleaver stated that his customers on the whole remain optimistic about the future — clearly there was a lot of interest in the bank scam issue in India and it did have some immediate impact on sentiment — but good businesses are still able to access the funding they require.
On the trade war between the US and China, Cleaver believed that the consumer demand for diamond jewellery in US and China remains positive. There was a healthy growth in demand in the US with January and February months seeing decent increase over the same period last year, while China is looking good with Hong Kong seeing a rebound in demand.
“Of course, we need to keep an eye on the developments that could impact consumer confidence due to the US and China trade war, but as things stand, downstream demand in these markets are looking good,” Cleaver said.
On being asked whether he considered lab-grown diamonds as threat to the natural industry, Cleaver said, “Synthetics aren’t finite, unique or timeless as diamonds are. We have already seen the prices of synthetics start to drop substantially in recent times, and this is only set to continue as they can be mass produced as technology products, and will therefore see production costs and values drop accordingly.”
Talking about the sightholders involvement in the bank and land scams, Cleaver said, “We have strict criteria for all sightholders to comply with and we take this very seriously. As you would expect as a responsible business, we look into issues when there is something we feel needs further investigation. But also as you would expect as a responsible business, we don’t talk about the specifics of any customer’s business, as this would be inappropriate, especially in the event that there may be an external investigation underway.”
by via Surat News, Latest Surat News Headlines & Live Updates - Times of India