Israel's diamond industry ended 2005 with impressive growth in all areas of activity, maintaining its position as a major world manufacturing and trading center for polished and rough diamonds. This was announced last week at a joint press conference held by Israel's diamond industry leadership.
In 2005 Israel’s polished and rough diamond exports broke, for the first time ever, the $10 billion threshold. Net polished exports in 2005 rose 5.8% to reach an all time high of $6.707 billion, compared to $6.337 billion in 2004. Rough diamond exports from Israel rose 20.5% in 2005 to reach $3.517 billion, up from $2.920 billion in 2004.
Net imports of rough diamonds totaled $5.318 billion, an increase of 3.2% over $5.151 billion in 2004. Israel's imports of polished diamonds increased 9.3% in 2005 to reach $3.897 billion, as compared to $3.564 billion last year.
Efforts to diversify diamond sources from the De Beers syndicate have succeeded. Imports from De Beers totaled $962 million in 2005 (18% of total imports), the same as in 2004.
Israel currently has 3,000 diamond polishers, out of 15,000 persons in the industry as a whole. Israel had 30,000 diamond polishers a decade ago, and more polishing is expected to be transferred overseas in 2006.
The United States remained the major export market for Israel's polished diamonds,however its export share declined from 67% in 2004 to 61% in 2005, with a greater weight shifting to Far Eastern and European markets.
Diamond leaders noted that this was a positive trend, and pointed to a greater diversification in export markets. Hong Kong accounted for 14% of Israel's polished exports, (direct exports to China accounted for 1.5%), Belgium 8%, Switzerland 5%, UK and Japan 2% each and other destinations 6.5%.
