Responding to the demands of the diamond sector, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman abolished the customs duty on imports of seeds used for difficult lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) manufacturing.

Also, she assured a research and development provide to one of the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) for a length of five years to encourage indigenous production of LGD seeds and machines and to lessen import dependency. The custom obligation price on LGD seeds is revised to nil from five consistent with cent.

The gems and jewelry zone termed it as a flow “to tackle the global challenges in addition to for stimulating exports.”

Colin Shah, MD, Kama Jewelry and previous chairman of Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), stated, “It will ensure India’s stop-to-stop global leadership in difficult to completed lab-grown diamond and jewelry manufacturing.”

The help for the particularly nascent LGD area came at a time while traditional herbal diamond enterprise confronted headwinds because of recessions within the West, escalating expenses of tough diamonds because of depleting reserves and the rising cost of manufacturing.

Dinesh Navadia, diamantaire and previous chairman of Gems and Jewellery Promotion Council (GJEPC) — Gujarat location, said that the today’s help for LGD will assist construct a far-wished environment. “There is a saturation of growth in traditional herbal diamond intake. The ultra-modern trend is for the lab-grown diamonds. Already numerous groups are running on this space. This will boost fee-addition and employment generation,” said Navadia.

LGD is a era-and innovation-driven emerging area with excessive employment potential. These environment-friendly diamonds have optically and chemically the same houses as natural diamonds. LGDs are made using two techniques — high stress excessive temperature approach (HPHT) and chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method. Most of Indian LGDs are made via CVD, while China commands leadership in HPHT diamonds.

“The US is the most important marketplace for LGDs. Recently we also are seeing domestic call for coming up. So, that is a timely selection,” Navadia introduced.

Surat-based totally diamantaire and exporter Ravi Dholakia of Radhe Shyam Diamonds said, “LGD is the destiny. Currently, it has only 2-three in step with cent share in general diamond marketplace. But the task lies inside the system to manufacture and getting the chemical compound proper.” Surat alone houses a few 1,000 LGD machines.

Power intake
Besides sourcing the seeds, that is imported in particular from Singapore, Switzerland and China, the strength consumption is any other heavy fee component in the production process.

Notably, in Gujarat, in which a large range of LGD devices are developing, the government had currently abolished the strength responsibility on the manufacturing procedure of lab-grown diamonds from 15 per cent for excessive tension (HT) connections and 10 in keeping with cent for low anxiety (LT) connections. The pass changed into geared toward improving competitiveness of India-made LGDs against Chinese LGDs.

The way India has mastered the artwork of reducing and sharpening of natural diamonds with contribution of approximately three-fourths of the worldwide turnover by using cost, the latest move is seen as new impetus to the world with a futuristic aim.

GJEPC information display polished LGD exports from India in December 2022 stood at ₹844 crore, up 8 according to cent from ₹779 crore in December 2021. Same for the April-December duration stood at ₹10,587 crore, up 54 according to cent from ₹6,865 crore a yr in the past. On the alternative hand the import of rough LGD became recorded at ₹919 crore in December 2022, and ₹7,656 crore for April-December 2022 length.