OREANDA-NEWS Last year, Russia remained the main "miner" of diamonds - for the second time in history, the country accounted for more than a third of all carats mined in the world, while for the first time since 2019, Russia was able to overtake Botswana in terms of the value of the stones obtained, according to RIA Novosti calculations according to the Kimberley Process.

The volume of global diamond production decreased by 8% last year to 111.5 million carats, and the value of these stones decreased by a fifth to $ 12.7 billion.

Last year's production volume was the second worst in history - a lower result was recorded only in the coronavirus year 2020 at the level of 107.3 million carats.

Russia produced 37.3 million carats last year, or 33.5% of all diamonds in the world, keeping its share of global production above a third for the second year in a row. Among the largest producers, the country was the only one able to increase the value of the extracted - by 1.5%, to 3.6 billion dollars, even despite a decrease in production by 11%. As a result, this allowed it to overtake Botswana in terms of the value of diamonds received for the first time since 2019.