Harare: Zimbabwe is holding its third 10- day diamond auction at Antwerp until later this month with approximately 500,000 carats of diamonds expected to go under the hammer, a facilitating company has said.

The auction is the country’s fifth since it started auctioning its rough diamonds on the international market in December last year. Zimbabwe held its first diamond auction in December last year at Antwerp after the European Union lifted sanctions against state diamond firm, the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation in September 2013.

The country then held its second auction at Antwerp in February, followed by two more at Dubai Diamond Exchange.

The facilitating company, Botswana-registered First Element announced at the weekend that it was holding another tender of rough diamonds from Zimbabwe from Sept. 3 to Sept. 16 where approximately 500,000 carats from six mines -Jinan Mining, Anjin Investments, DMC, Mbada Diamonds, Marange Resources and DTZ OZGEO -will go under the hammer.

“The tender will run daily (weekends excluded), from Wednesday September 3 to Tuesday September 16, 2014 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Antwerp Diamond Tender Facility,” First Element said in a statement.

At the two diamond auctions at Antwerp, Zimbabwe sold about 1.2 million carats of diamonds and generated about 80 million U.S. dollars. At its first diamond auction at Dubai Diamond Exchange in March, the country sold about 380,000 carats of diamonds worth 30 million U.S. dollars. Its second auction of about 1 million carats at Dubai Diamond Exchange ran for two weeks in July this year but the value generated has not been revealed.

The Zimbabwe government has also revealed plans to trade its gems at the Shanghai and Botswana Diamond Exchanges, as well as eventually trading them locally before year end.