India's polished carat fetches $671.39, its grown carat $66.51
GJEPC's April-to-August statement puts natural polished exports 7.38% lower in value on 6.75% more carats. Grown polished shipped 80.24 lakh carats against natural's 67.34. The council's figures are provisional.
Both carats got cheaper. GJEPC's April-to-August statement prints natural polished at $671.39 a carat and grown polished at $66.51. India shipped more of both and earned less on each.
If you cut and polish for export: Volume is not the constraint. Natural carats shipped rose 6.75% while their value fell 7.38%, so what moved is the rate the goods fetched.
If you price grown goods: The council's own per-carat print is $66.51, about a tenth of the natural figure. That is the ratio to hold against a supplier's quote.
What this is not: A crossover. Grown carats already exceeded natural ones in the same five months of 2025, at 65.04 lakh against 63.08 lakh.
| Line | Apr–Aug 2025 | Apr–Aug 2026 | Change | Per carat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural polished, value | US$4,881.59m | US$4,521.12m | −7.38% | US$671.39 in 2026 |
| Natural polished, carats | 63.08 lakh | 67.34 lakh | +6.75% | US$773.87 in 2025 |
| Grown polished, value | US$477.53m | US$533.67m | +11.75% | US$66.51 in 2026 |
| Grown polished, carats | 65.04 lakh | 80.24 lakh | +23.37% | US$73.42 in 2025 |
| Gross exports, all lines | US$11,179.56m | US$11,467.49m | +2.58% | — |
IValue fell, carats rose
Down 7.38%. Natural polished exports ran at US$4,521.12m from April to August, against US$4,881.59m a year earlier. The council calls every figure provisional.
Up 6.75%. Volume went the other way, to 67.34 lakh carats from 63.08 lakh. More goods left India for less money.
IIThe grown carat is a tenth
Sixty-six fifty-one. The council prints grown polished at US$66.51 a carat for the five months. Natural prints at US$671.39, about ten times as much.
Carats, not value. Grown polished made 80.24 lakh carats against natural's 67.34 lakh. On value it is US$533.67m against US$4,521.12m.
IIIStudded gold carried the total
Up 2.58% overall. Gross gem and jewellery exports reached US$11,467.49m for the five months, 2.58% above last year. Polished diamonds fell inside that total.
Studded up 26.73%. Studded gold jewellery rose to US$2,878.59m while plain gold jewellery fell to US$2,153.58m.
01What would change this call+
The DGCI&S reconciliation, or a revision to either column. Both per-carat figures are quotients of a value and a volume the council prints as provisional, so a revision to either input moves the output, and a large enough revision to volume alone would change the direction of the per-carat fall without any price changing.
02Why an average carat falls when no stone is repriced+
A per-carat average is not a price. It is a total divided by a count, and it moves whenever the mix of what was counted changes, even if every individual stone sold for exactly what it sold for last year. Ship the same goods at lower prices and the average falls. Ship more small, cheap goods alongside the same large ones and the average also falls, with no stone repriced at all. The two cases look identical in this table and the report does not separate them. That matters here because the volume line rose while the value line fell, which is the signature of a mix shift as much as of a price cut. What can be said from these figures alone is that India was paid less per carat shipped. What cannot be said from them is that any given stone fetched less, or by how much. Separating the two needs a size-band breakdown, which this report does not carry.
03Method · the desk’s arithmetic+
Every figure was read from one document: GJEPC's master export report for August 2026, reference GJC/Sts/AUG 2026, dated 09/09/2026 on its own first page, downloaded to a saved file with a referer header after the bare URL was tried, returning 200, content type application/pdf, 559,894 bytes, 13 pages. Text was extracted from that saved file locally and every digit string printed here was then grepped in the extracted text before being written: '671.39' 1 hit, '66.51' 1, '80.24' 1, '67.34' 1, '4521.12' 1, '533.67' 3, '4,881.59' 2, '477.53' 3, '63.08' 1, '65.04' 1, '6.75' 1, '23.37' 1, '7.38' 3, '11.75' 3, '11467.49' 3, '2.58' 3, '26.73' 3, '2,878.59' 2 and '09/09/2026' 1. The report states both 2026 per-carat figures in its own words, as 'Per Carat Value April to Aug 2026 US$ 671.39' and 'Per Carat Value April to AUG 2026 US$ 66.51'; neither is derived here. The 2025 per-carat pair is Carat Capital's division and is labelled as such wherever it appears. The council's own statistics index page was fetched separately, 200, and is the page the report is linked from; the Bureau's standing note that this door returns 302 then 404 did not reproduce, and it opened on the first attempt with a referer set. No second source was opened and none is cited: this is a single-document article and the document is the primary. Archive check against content/articles.json, by entity, period and figure, every hit opened rather than counted. Our own article of 20 September 2026, 'India's polished exports fall 4.93% in value, rise 3.23% in carats', was read in full: it reports the SAME RELEASE but the AUGUST SINGLE MONTH — US$924.51m of natural polished, 13.36 lakh carats, value 4.93% lower on volume 3.23% higher, an average of US$692.00 a carat against US$751.51 — whereas this article reports the APRIL-TO-AUGUST CUMULATIVE period and the polished lab-grown lines. Same entity, different period, so the verdict is ADVANCED rather than repeat. The overlap is stated here rather than left for a reader to find. The lab-grown export lines are not in that article or anywhere else in the archive: greps for '533.67', '477.53', '65.04', '23.37', '125.17', '97.44', '28.45', '80.24' and '66.51' each return 0 articles, and the nine archive articles that mention India, lab-grown and exports together were each opened — the nearest, 'five-ninety-four-from-china' of 25 August, covers rough lab-grown IMPORTS for FY2025-26, a different direction and a different period. No superlative is printed: grown carats already led natural carats in the same five months of 2025, 65.04 lakh against 63.08 lakh, so this is a widening gap and not a crossover, and the article says so in Layer 2 rather than in a footnote.
Diamond Workers' Union Gujarat asks GJEPC for a wage survey
Who is paid to make the carats this report counts, and what their union asked the same council for.
The trade, filed before the New York open.
Prices, tenders and the one story that moved the industry overnight. Ninety seconds.
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