MUMBAI, July 12: The ambitions of Mumbai’s diamond traders are grand, even if their offices are not.

They nurse dreams of rivalling Belgium’s Antwerp as the world’s diamond trading capital while sitting in ageing tower blocks that are about as grimy as a cut diamond is sparkly.

Corridors are splattered bloody red with decades’ worth of spat-out chewing tobacco. Lift doors must be yanked shut by hand. Toilets must be entered gingerly. Traders’ offices, though somewhat cleaner than the public spaces, tend to be cramped.

But, barring any last-minute bureaucratic spanners, the bulk of the trade should soon shift across the city to a new home more befitting one of India’s biggest export earners.

India already polishes about nine in every ten diamonds, mostly tiny, cheaper stones less than a carat. Faced with growing global competition, India hopes to cling on to its position in polishing by spreading into an area in which it has lagged: the trade of rough diamonds.

We’re trying to make India the largest trading centre and manufacturing centre for diamonds,” said Sanjay Kothari, the chairman of India’s Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC). Why should we go to Antwerp?” A bullish confidence is common among Indian businessmen these days.—Reuters