India plans to invest 70 million rupees to establish a "Center of Excellence" for cultivating diamonds

In an article two weeks ago, we discussed some expected content of the Indian government budget (Budget 2024). To this day, the framework for this budget (Inter Budget) has been released, which includes many interesting projects.

In order to further support the development of the diamond industry, Indian Finance Minister Kanubhai Desai announced an investment of 70 million rupees (approximately 6 million RMB) to establish a "Centre of Excellence" (CoE: Centre of Excellence) to support small and medium-sized diamond enterprises.

In addition, the industry also expects a later investment of 50 million rupees (approximately 4.3 million RMB), mainly for the development of the Indian Diamond Institute. However, currently only demands have been made from the industry to the Indian government, and confirmation has not yet been received from the latter.

The concept of "Center of Excellence" can be divided into several different categories based on our understanding, including core expert teams within the enterprise, core business operations organizations, and core data centers, among others.

At present, the Indian side has not disclosed the specific functions of this pending center, but given its statement that it is likely to be built in Surat and the distribution characteristics of India's diamond industry chain cultivation, we believe that it is likely to serve the upstream and midstream of the diamond industry cultivation.

The decision to establish a center has inspired Indian industry insiders. GJEPC stated that the current sluggish global demand for diamonds has a significant impact on India's natural diamond cutting and grinding industry. So the government's establishment of "centers of excellence" will help ensure the technological development of the diamond processing industry. In other words, Indian diamond processors can maintain technological development and retain employees by continuously grinding and cultivating diamonds.

Matching it is the statement of the Jewelry Processing Association of India (SJMA). The association has submitted an application to establish a "Common Facility Centre" (CFC: Common Facility Centre) or to assist small jewelry processing plants through equipment sharing.

Please refer to the above content with caution.