Mumbai: India’s polished diamond exports were sailing along quite nicely in 2016, having put the significant downturn of 2015 squarely behind and having nearly returned to 2014 and 2013 levels, until the bottom fell out in November as exports dropped 53% from $2.52 billion in October to $1.18 billion in November.

According to statistics from the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), polished exports bounced back in December, increasing 25% from November to reach $1.48 billion, does not indicate a full return to health. Compared to the lows of 2015, polished exports increased 22.51% from the $1.21 billion worth of exports for the same period of the previous year. For the fiscal year thus far (nine months from April-December), polished exports have climbed 13% to $16.9 billion from $14.9 billion in 2015, though they still fall somewhat short of the $17.3 billion recorded in 2014 before the downturn hit.

The other major indicator for India’s diamond trade, imports of rough diamonds, in December fell 28% in volume and 4.7% in value compared to December 2015. This is likely a result of the government’s demonitisation policy, as the figures are consistent with reports from all the major miners, which indicated that smaller, lower-value goods – typically destined for India – were not moving.

For the first nine months of the year, imports of rough diamonds for the April-December 2016 period reached $12.689 billion as compared to $10.119 billion for the same period of the previous year, marking a growth of 25.41%. The volume of rough imports increased slightly more than 8%, from 95.5 million carats to 103.4 million in 2016, which lags markedly behind the 112.8 million rough carats imported during the first nine months of 2014.