Glitter's back: Gems, jewellery exports rise

Christmas season has brought the glitter back to Indian gems and jewellery units, with the precious metals exports turning positive in September for the first time after 11 months.

Gems and jewellery exports, which started melting from October 2008 under the heat of recession in the West, have registered a 2 per cent increase in September this fiscal over a year ago.

These exports increased to $2.56 billion for the month under review, according to the data released by the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council.

Though the expansion is moderate, it has brought the optimism back among the Indian exporting community ahead of the Christmas.

"Jewellery exporters are getting good number of orders as there is a healthy demand from the Western markets," Federation of Indian Export Organisation President A Sakthivel said.

The proactive policy of the government giving sops to exporters also helped the situation.

However, in terms of segment performance, exports of cut and polished diamonds and coloured gemstones showed an improvement 11 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.

But gold jewellery exports remained in the negative zone with contraction of 16 per cent.

The exporters believe that the positive trend would continue as there are signs of recovery  in various economies resulting into improvement in the inventories.

The fall in the precious metals exports had started showing signs of improvement from July onwards as the pace of decline was much lower than a sharp fall witnessed in the beginning of this fiscal.
 
The UAE is the largest destination for India's gems and jewellery accounting for 31 per cent of the total exports, followed by Hong Kong, 25 per cent and the US, 20 per cent.