Harare: A Zimbabwean cabinet minister has claimed that the country’s Marange diamonds have effectively run out. Information minister Jonathan Moyo said the country should wake up to the reality that the diamonds had dried up.

“Diamond revenues from alluvial diamond mining have dramatically shrunk. We now need to come terms with this reality,” said Moyo in response during an interface with citizens on Twitter.

Former mines minister Obert Mpofu once claimed that the discovery of the diamond fields in 2006 would earn the country $2 billion annually.

President Robert Mugabe also previously declared that the country’s problems would be a “thing of the past following the discovery of about a quarter of the world’s diamond deposits”. However, the country’s economy had failed to recuperate.

New Zimbabwe.com reports that former finance minister, Tendai Biti, constantly said little of what was earned from Marange made its way to the national treasury during his tenure in the coalition government that ended in July 2013.

Trade figures released by The Kimberley Process last July showed that Zimbabwe’s diamond output fell 14 percent to $538.5 million last year in terms of value.

Its volume of production also eased 14 percent to 10.411 million carats while the average price dropped 3 percent to $51.72 per carat.