CaratDoha signs Singapore, Shanghai and Tokyo, and says so 33 days later
The Qatar Diamond Exchange signed cooperation agreements with the Singapore, Shanghai and Tokyo bourses at a congress that closed 15 July, and announced them on 17 August.
§1Three signatures, four names.
The Qatar Diamond Exchange has signed memoranda of understanding with the diamond bourses of Singapore, Shanghai and Tokyo. Each was signed by the exchange's director, Ghanim Nasser Al Saadi, with the president of the counterparty: Fabio Cascapera of the Diamond Exchange of Singapore, Lin Qiang of the Shanghai Diamond Exchange and Michio Iwasaki of the Tokyo Diamond Exchange. The agreements set frameworks for member introductions, bilateral visits and reciprocal participation in each other's tenders, auctions and viewings, and commit the parties to the World Diamond Council's System of Warranties and to Responsible Jewellery Council standards.
The dates are the part worth reading twice. The signings took place at the 41st World Diamond Congress in Singapore, which the World Federation of Diamond Bourses and the International Diamond Manufacturers Association held from 12 to 15 July. The exchange announced them in a statement on Monday 17 August, at least thirty-three days after the congress closed, and Rapaport carried the news on 23 August. This paper reported the Qatar Diamond Exchange's own launch on 28 July, thirteen days after the congress ended and three weeks before the agreements signed there were made public. Nothing in that sequence is improper. It does mean the exchange had lined up three Asian counterparties before it opened its doors.
§2What an MoU is worth.
What an agreement between bourses is worth is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it is worth the traffic it produces. None of the three documents has been published, and none is reported to carry a volume commitment, a fee schedule or a term. What they give a Doha member is a named contact and a reciprocal footing at three exchanges in the region that does most of the world's cutting, trading and buying. That is a real thing to hand a member and a difficult thing to measure.
An agreement between bourses is worth the traffic it produces, and no more.
§3The argument that is not settled.
Set against the competition the scale problem has not moved. Dubai posted $41.7 billion of diamond trade in 2025, a figure this paper has carried before, and Antwerp and Mumbai are older channels still. Qatar's exchange opened in July 2026 at the Ras Bufontas free zone with sorting, vaulting, independent valuation and tender rights under one roof, and Qatar joined the Kimberley Process as a full member in 2021. The infrastructure argument was settled before these signatures. Three bourse agreements do not settle the volume argument, and volume is what decides where a parcel clears.
This paper wrote in July that Doha had built the room and written the rules and now had to give the trade a reason to walk in. Three signatures at a July congress, made public in August, are the beginning of that answer rather than the answer. The figure that would settle it is a tender total out of Ras Bufontas with Asian buyers in the room, and no such figure exists yet. Until one does, these are intentions with four names on them.
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