India has overtaken China to become second largest diamond market: De Beers CEO Al Cook

India’s diamond market is recording a double-digit growth, while the Chinese luxury market is facing a slowdown, he noted 

London: India has beaten China to become the second-largest market for diamonds, De Beers Group CEO Al Cook told Bloomberg during an interaction recently. He mentioned that the Indian diamond market is growing at a double-digit rate, while the Chinese luxury market is facing a slowdown. 

“The good news is that India has taken over where China was, and India is now the second largest market in the world for diamonds, and that’s growing at double-digit rates,” Cook was quoted as saying. 

A slowdown in China’s economic growth is taking a toll on Chinese luxury sector demand, Cook was quoted as saying in the interview. “The first thing we’ll see is stabilization of Chinese demand, which is coming through at the moment. That’s an important platform to build on. But quite honestly, we see the growth, the regrowth of Chinese demand being a rather longer-term story,” he stated. 

Talking about the fall in demand for natural diamonds in the United States, thanks to the inflow of lab-grown ones, Cook told his interviewer, “Demand in the United States has been reduced by lab-grown diamonds. So we’ve got to take that on and tell the story of natural diamonds far better than we have.” 

Cook said lab-grown diamonds are “made in a microwave” and compared them to buying a poster of the Mona Lisa rather than buying an actual one with a history attached to it. “Lab-grown diamonds… It’s a little bit like buying a poster of the Mona Lisa and putting it up in an art gallery and telling people it’s the real thing,” Cook was quoted as saying. “A natural diamond is created over a billion years under the surface of the Earth, whereas a lab-grown one is created in a microwave in China in three weeks.” 

According to media reports, India’s cut and polished diamond exports saw a decline this year due to fall in demand in the US and China. This has boosted India’s domestic market for diamonds. 

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