First Zimbabwe Tender held in Antwerp this week

Earlier this week, First Element Ltd announced the first tender of Zimbabwean diamonds, which is currently being held in the Antwerp Diamond Tender Facility, from Wednesday December 11 to Tuesday December 17, 2013. The diamond tender, the first one held in Antwerp since the European Union lifted the sanctions against the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC), is the result of high level meetings of the Zimbabwean officials and the Antwerp World Diamond Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe and Antwerp in the past month.

The diamond tender includes goods from Marange Resources, Diamond Mining Company (DMC), Anjin Investments, Jinan and Kusena Diamonds, totalling about 300,000 carats.

Following the lifting of the EU sanctions against ZMDC in September of this year, Marange diamonds can now be traded in Antwerp. This opening of the market should have a highly significant and positive impact on the necessary market transparency. In addition, Antwerp is convinced that the combination of solid transparency, accountability and potentially increased mining revenues will contribute to a sustainable social and economic development of Zimbabwe. A new influx of rough diamonds could also significantly reinforce Antwerp's position as the leading hub for rough diamond trade, where today already 84% of all rough diamonds are being traded.

Increased transparency and revenues are also clear priorities of Zimbabwe’s Minister of Mines and Mining Development Hon. Walter Chidhakwa, who in his recent speech during the AWDC Networking event in Harare noted: “We want to ensure that beyond meeting the KPCS requirement, to secure the sector, to ensure that the process by which our diamonds are mined, marketed and logistically moved to other countries has the same level of transparency as those marketed elsewhere in the world”.