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RAPAPORT... The World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) completed a two-day meeting of the executive committee and Asia-Pacific presidents’ summit in Shanghai held March 9 and 10, having addressed a range of "crucial issues affecting the global diamond industry," according to WFDB's president, Ernie Blom.
"The executive committee meeting and Asia-Pacific presidents’ summit once again proved its worth in providing a setting for comprehensive discussions on all the critical issues of the day that are affecting our members," said Blom. "The executive meeting adopted a very firm stand on the issue of global grading standards. We will have zero tolerance for flagrant abuse of grading standards.” Additional topics included declining profitability for the WFDB members due to high rough prices and falling polished prices, as well as the decrease in bank credit to the trade and the need to boost consumer demand for stones.
Attendees praised the World Diamond Mark (WDM) for promoting generic diamond marketing. The program recently launched a new website and it will also be available in Chinese along with WeChat, the Chinese version of Facebook, shortly. "Coming to China, as with every previous visit, has again been an eye-opener," said Blom. "This is an incredibly important country for the diamond industry. It takes $2 billion of diamond imports and turns them into $9 billion of diamond jewelry sales. We also had the pleasure of being hosted by the vice mayor of Shanghai, who expressed his support for the diamond and jewelry trade. These were two days of very positive meetings where regional presidents put the issues that impact the most on the table for discussion." The Korea Diamond Exchange will host the WFDB's Asia-Pacific presidents’ summit in 2016.
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