Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma said that he intends to further capitalise on the potential of Sierra Leone in diamond manufacturing and polishing, according to a Reuters report. For this, he plans to issue a legislation by which locally produced diamonds would also be locally cut and polished before being exported.

Koroma mentioned that “We have not benefited as much as we should have from our mineral resources and that is why we are going to ... put in place a mining policy that will ensure that we move away from having low returns.” The policy, which will be put before parliament very soon looks at adding value to the Sierra Leone diamonds and creating new jobs. In 2006, Sierra Leone exported 603,568.07 carats of diamonds worth $125 million.