Belgium’s polished diamond exports up 32% in November

There was a rise in the value of Belgium’s polished diamond exports and imports during November 2011. Polished diamond exports rose 32 percent y-o-y to $1.23 million, in which the average price of the diamonds rose 47 percent to $1,963.55 per carat. Volume of polished diamond imports dipped 10 percent to 637,507.96 carats.

Imports of polished diamonds rose 29 percent to $1.16 billion. The net polished exports (which represents excess of exports over imports) rose twice as much as November 2010, to $87.5 million.

Rough diamond exports rose 41 percent to $1.17 billion, while rough diamond imports increased 9 percent to $998.6 million. This led the country’s net rough imports (representing the excess of imports over exports) to drop to a deficit of $172.1 million (in November 2010 imports were higher than exports by $86.1 million).

The country’s net diamond account in November rose to $259.6 million (in November 2010 the same was a deficit of $42.4 million).