Editor’s Note
This article highlights India’s ambitious entry into the global diamond trade with the inauguration of the world’s largest diamond exchange in Mumbai. The project, decades in the making, aims to position the city as a major hub to rival established centers like Antwerp and Tel-Aviv.
India, which boasts having cut the world’s smallest diamond (0.0003 carat or 0.00006 gram), can now pride itself on hosting the planet’s largest diamond exchange. This is the realization of a dream dating back to 1992… and aims to make Bombay an international diamond trading center with the ambition of rivaling Antwerp and Tel-Aviv.
Located in Bandra, a booming business district of India’s economic and financial capital, the new premises of the Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB) were inaugurated yesterday. “The date is not insignificant,” acknowledges Anoop Mehta, President of the BDB. Yesterday, Indians were celebrating Dussehra, one of the most important festivals in the Hindu calendar. It marks the victory of good over evil…
The Bharat Diamond Bourse premises cover 287,700 square meters. They include eight towers of nine floors each and will bring together under one roof sellers and buyers, banks, customs services, investors, etc. The complex will also include vaults. In Bombay, the diamond trade is still conducted in cramped and overcrowded offices, squeezed into three buildings located in the south of the megalopolis. And not so long ago, exporters had to cross the entire city with their precious cargo to reach the customs services. By December, everyone should have moved to Bandra.
The diamond industry provides work for some 850,000 Indians. The most important cutting and polishing center remains Surat, a small town in Gujarat, 250 kilometers north of Bombay.
The BDB, for its part, plans to increase its turnover, currently at $28 billion, by 10 to 15% per year over the next five years.
The realization of this gigantic $240 million project was not without obstacles. Land acquisition disputes, arguments between architects and contractors, natural disasters… it took nearly twenty years to resolve all the problems. It was about time. While India is indeed a leader in the export of cut and polished diamonds, it has hardly established itself so far as an international trading hub for these stones.
