Up 26.5% in a month: India's export machine restarts

§1The factory moves again.

The world's cutting floor is moving again. India's gross gems and jewellery exports reached $2,212.6 million in June, up 26.5% from a year earlier, according to Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council data reported this past week — the sector's sharpest monthly gain in recent memory, landing after two years in which the trade's biggest factory mostly learned to shrink.

§2Gold carries, diamonds turn.

The composition matters as much as the headline. Gold jewellery carried the month, up 54.5% to $1,087.7 million — a number inflated by bullion itself, with gold roughly a fifth more expensive than a year ago, but too large to be price alone. The quieter figure is the important one: cut-and-polished diamond exports rose 8.7% to $846.7 million, the category's first clean monthly increase after a slump that has closed mines on other continents.

The quarter tempers the celebration. April-through-June exports totalled $6,612.2 million, up just 0.04% — flat, in plain language. Cut-and-polished shipments for the quarter were $2,720.2 million, down 4.1% by value even as volume rose 8.9% to 3.98 million carats. The average export price works out to $681.70 a carat: smaller and cheaper goods are doing the recovering, which squares with the small-stone turn this desk has been tracking since June.

§3The quarter keeps it honest.

Upstream, the discipline holds. Rough imports for the quarter fell 32.4% by value and 8.6% by volume to 6.69 million carats — Surat is still working down inventory rather than restocking on faith. June's gross imports of $1,720.6 million, up 10.06%, suggest the restocking has at least begun, timed to a July De Beers sight where rough pricing was expected to ease.