Israeli Rough Diamond Trade Plummets in July

Rough diamond trade with Israel dropped dramatically in July. Rough imports fell 37 percent in value to $342,197,551, while the volume plunged 52.6 percent to 756,677 carats.

The sharp decline in the volume of imports indicates the industry's focus on better, higher priced goods. The average price per carat stood at $452.24, rising 30 percent over July 2005, when the average per carat price was $338.68. Interestingly, imports in July 2005 fell 50 percent in volume while rising 2.6 percent in value.

During the first seven months of 2006, rough diamond imports totaled $2,629.5 million on shipments of 8,218593 carats. Imports fell 18.3 percent in value and 29.9 percent in volume.

Rough diamond exports declined 35.7 percent in value to $195 million, and 28.6 percent in volume to 1,412,468 carts. Exports were nearly double imports in July, a trend seen several times this year, though not as extreme as in July.

Exports during the January-July period declined 26.6 percent to $1,623.2 million. By volume, rough diamond exports were down 32.9 percent to 10,459,354 carats.

A comparison of exports to imports in the first seven months of the year shows that the volume of exports was about 20 percent larger than imports. Could it be that somebody has secretly found a diamond mine in the country?