SURAT: For Suresh Lalan, a physically challenged diamond unit owner, the last six months have been the toughest. He had to cut 120 jobs and was forced to shut down 30 out of 35 emery wheels at his unit, established about 25 years ago. At present, Lalan runs the unit with less than 10 diamond polishers. Lalan is not an isolated case. The world’s largest diamond cutting and polishing centre in Surat has come under the grip of recession owing to drastic fall in orders of polished diamonds in the wake of massive economic crisis in China and Eurozone.

Surat’s diamond industry, which processes Rs 90,000 crore worth of polished diamonds per annum, has seen over 350 small diamond units shutting shop in the last four months, rendering over 20,000 workers jobless. Around 50,000 diamond workers from Bihar have moved out of the city with the drastic reduction of polished diamond manufacturing by the unit owners.

Baring a couple of big diamond companies, most units have cut production of polished diamonds by over 60 per cent. Wages of the diamond workers have been reduced by almost 50 per cent due to cut in production — diamond workers are paid on piece-meal basis.

For the first time ever, rough diamond imports have declined by almost 26 per cent between April-September-2015 compared to same period in previous year. This is going to directly impact the livelihood of 4.5 lakh diamond workers as there will be less rough diamonds to process, further creating unemployment in the industry.

Regional chairman of Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), Dinesh Navadiya told TOI, “Diamond industry has hit a rough patch. Rough diamond prices are edging upward, while the sluggish global demand has created inventory pile-up, resulting in the polished diamond prices falling by more than 20 per cent”

AS per GJEPC data, the polished diamond export from India fell by 14 per cent to $10 billion between April-September-2015 compared to $12 billion during the same period in previous year. In 2014-15, India export polished diamond worth $23 billion.

The industry has seen default cases worth over Rs 3,000 crore from Surat and Mumbai. Diamond analyst, Anirudha Lidbide told TOI, “The industry is sitting on a huge stockpile of polished diamonds running into billions of dollars. Without clearing the inventories, diamantaires will not take risk of processing more rough diamonds. Even the Christmas season is quite a dampener for the industry this time due to falling demand from the US.”

