Courtesy: Alrosa

Russia, Botswana and Angola together accounted for close to 63% of global production value in 2025, according to the latest Kimberley Process numbers. Global rough diamond output slipped nearly 8% in 2025, yet the industry still pulled in almost the same amount of money it did the year before.

Total rough diamond production fell to 98.8 million carats, down from 107.9 million carats in 2024, a drop of 8.4%. Total value, though, held up far better, slipping just 3.15% to $9.23 billion from $9.53 billion. The result: miners pulled fewer stones out of the ground, but each carat fetched more on average, with the worldwide price per carat climbing to $93.43 in 2025 from $88.35 the year before.

Russia mined 31.5 million carats in 2025, down 15.6% from 37.3 million in 2024. Value dropped even further, falling 18.3% to $2.72 billion from $3.34 billion. The average price per carat came in at $86.46, roughly flat compared to $89.37 the year before.

Russia is losing ground on both counts, but the scale gap between it and the rest of the field is still wide enough that it holds the top spot comfortably.

Botswana’s output dropped to 15.5 million carats, down 14.5% from 18.1 million. Yet the value of that output rose to $1.98 billion, up 45.5% from $1.36 billion.

Botswana’s diamonds got significantly more valuable per carat. Average value per carat jumped to $127.66, up from $74.99 in 2024, a rise of over 70%. That’s the sharpest swing among the top producers this year, and it points to Botswana pulling in larger or higher-quality stones rather than just more of them.

Angola is the outlier. Volume rose to 15.2 million carats, up 8.3% from 14 million. Value climbed to $1.81 billion, up 28.3% from $1.41 billion. Price per carat rose too, from $100.68 to $119.22, up 18.4%.

Angola is the only country in this group that grew across volume, value and price per carat at the same time. That’s a meaningfully different trend line than Russia and Botswana, both of which are producing less rough this year even where value went up.

DRC remains the highest volume, lowest value producer among the majors. It mined 8.9 million carats in 2025, enough for 5th place by volume, but its diamonds averaged just $5.01/ct, compared to Namibia’s $343.88/ct. That gap is one of the starkest in the whole dataset.

India didn’t mine a single carat of rough diamond, but it imported 106.1 million carats worth $11.07 billion in 2025, more than the combined production value of Russia, Botswana and Angola put together. That’s down slightly from 2024’s $12.18 billion, a drop of about 9.1%, but India’s share of global import value actually rose slightly, from 39.56% to 43.25%.

In 2025, there was less rough coming out of the ground overall, but Botswana and Angola got paid more for what they did produce, while per carat prices generally trended down across most producing nations. Namibia and Lesotho remain the standout exceptions, still fetching the highest average prices of $343.88 per carat and $330.90 per carat, respectively, in the world despite both slipping year on year.