N e w s

The Supervisory Council of ALROSA viewed the project of Trade agreement with De Beers regarding the supply of Russian diamonds to the world's market. The results were sensational. At the first place, it is not possible for the Agreement to come into force at the beginning of 2002. Secondary, ALROSA finally revealed the figures of desired sales through De Beers, which is $4 billion. The experts immediately estimated these figures as adverse for the Russian company.

According to Sergey Ulin, the Vice-President of ALROSA, The Supervisory Council has recognized, that the contract with De Beers will be of a great benefit for the company. To be precise, plans to put for the market diamonds worth about $4 billion without participation of the Government and supplies from Russian State Treasury GOKHRAN. However earlier De Beers announced that the discussed period of its partnership with ALROSA was no less than 5 years This means ALROSA annually selling to De Beers $ 800 million worth of diamonds.

Nevertheless, the final proposed sales figures for have not been approved yet and still remained the subject of further discussion. In spite of the fact that the State will not be involved in the process of development of the new contract, being the main shareholder of the company, it is impossible for ALROSA to take the final decision without the approval of the Government. It seems that one of the points where ALROSA did not take into account the wish of the Government was the volume of gemstone export, The company explains this by the current situation on domestic and global diamond markets.

Thus, in the beginning of December Russia still has not developed a final position in the future alliance with De Beers. Besides even if the two parties will come to mutual agreement, the project of the new contract will demand approval of the European Union. Last keeps an eye on De Beers for infringement of the antimonopoly legislation. Taking into account all these fact, Sergey Ulin agrees that it may well be possible that the Agreement will not be signed at all before the end of the year.