Zimbabwe central banker stockpiles gold to bolster ZiG currency
The ZiG - short for Zimbabwe gold — is the nation’s sixth attempt at having a functioning local currency in the last 15 years.
Bloomberg reports London-listed Anglo American announced that its Namibian subsidiary Namdeb Diamond has approved a $36 million new mine at Sendelingsdrif on the Orange River on the South African border:
“The project is currently in the detailed design phase,” Chief Executive Officer Inge Zaamwani-Kamwi said today at a press briefing in the capital, Windhoek. Construction will start toward the end of 2013 and will take 18 months, she said.
Namdeb, which plans to produce 600,000 carats in 2012, expects the new mine to produce 45,000 carats a year.
Consultants Bain & Co paints a rosy future for the industry saying global demand will nearly double by the end of the decade thanks to an expanding middle class in China and India:
Diamond demand, in carats, will grow more than six per cent per year through 2020, far outpacing the 2.8 percent annual supply growth, creating a “structural shortage” for the industry and signaling potential price increases, particularly in the larger-carat diamond segments.
Even the most conservative growth scenario in the report forecasts a strong positive outlook for the $60 billion diamond jewelry industry.
Continue reading at Bloomberg.
