There is a very famous Sinhalese saying; Manikak paye hepunath kana no handunai that the blind man is unaware of a gem even when he treads over it. This saying can also be applied to Sri Lanka’s Gem and Jewellery Industry.
No one has yet identified the value of this industry. If the gem and jewellery Industry is developed to cater to the current world demands it could easily enrich the country’s coffers exceeding three billion dollars a year. Yet, it is disheartening to realize that its present contribution to the national economy is several hundred million dollars a year. During the recent history some countries like Thailand has come into the pinnacle of the gem and jewellery industry, even without any gemstones. Thailand is now considered as the world hub in the gem trade. Considering the Sri Lankan gem and jewellery industry, we have wasted a lot of time. The time has come to do something for the betterment of the gem and jewellery industry and to enrich the country’s coffers with the income earned from the trade.
Expected growth of dollar reserves from Sri Lankan gem and jewellery industry
Sri Lanka has the gifted treasure to go to the pinnacle of the industry. Sri Lanka is considered as a country having the largest variety of gem mineral in comparison to the land area. Sri Lanka was also famous as a country producing the best quality blue sapphires such as corn flower blue, royal blue or the peacock feather blue. kings, queens and the world’s most wealthiest people sought after the finest quality blue sapphires produced by Sri Lanka. Above all Sri Lanka has the very competent gem and jewellery workforce. Highly acclaimed gem and jewellery professionals. Yet the only drawback is whether Sri Lanka is harnessing their expertise to develop the industry at its best.
At the Royal wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate. The Prince had a beautiful Sri Lankan blue sapphire embedded ring inherited from his mother, Princess Diana and he used it to adorn the ring finger of his fiancée at their engagement. According to a BBC News this 12 carat oval-cut blue sapphire was mined somewhere in the Matale district and eventually ended up in Britain thirty-five years ago. This Royal wedding made the royalty and nobility of the world interested in Sri Lankan sapphires once more.
This is an opportunity in the offing for Sri Lanka gem trade to open its doors to the outside world. Yet it is once again disheartening to know that the brand name “Ceylon Sapphires” no longer belongs to us, it is presently owned by Thailand. Despite all the setbacks the relevant government organization are taking all steps to upgrade the gem and jewellery industry in Sri Lanka.
One of the greatest handicaps is the unavailability of a well-equipped international standard gemological laboratory. Without a well-recognized laboratory, the country cannot compete with other countries involved in the gem and jewellery trade.
Hence each year Sri Lanka keeps losing a considerable portion of our export earnings due to this fact. In addition, we are earning a considerable income from diamond cutting and some diamond cutters require to get certificates for their gem samples from reputed laboratories. As such since we do not have well recognized laboratories to obtain diamond certificates they need to send the samples to foreign laboratories incurring dollars. This is again practiced during the exportation of high value of coloured stones.
Nowadays people are aware of the importance of purchasing hallmarked jewellery. Today with the help of X-ray Fluorescence technology and laser inscription technology hallmarking can be carried out within minutes. Earlier the x-ray fluorescence technology provided false readings when the jewellery was made of some other metal and heavily coated with precious metals like gold. Today the technology is highly advance and methods such as gold detection and identification techniques (AuDIT) could be detected on the composition of jewellery coatings without going into complicated assay techniques. This way hallmarking centres could be managed with a few professionals and could carry out any number of hallmarking of jewellery within a day and capable of making huge profits. This will eventually strengthen the national economy too. On the other hand if hallmarking of jewellery become compulsory like some other countries Sri Lanka could double the income generated from hallmarking in no time.
Gem resources is considered as exhaustible resources. Due to this fact the quality of Lankan gemstones coming to the market drastically declines. The easiest way to overcome this problem is to import gems from African countries. During the recent history most of African countries encounter new gem deposits. In most African countries a majority of people are illiterate and they are not so conversant once new gem discoveries are made, as such there is a possibility to acquire gems for a petty sum.
Right now, most of the gem trade in Madagascar is controlled by Sri Lankan traders. This is an ideal time to conquer the gem trade of other African countries too. So in this regard the government has the responsibility to help and guide our gem traders to visit these destinations bringing gems to their home country.
As this is very easy to eliminate major problems and upgrade our gem and jewellery industry that is insufficient in the flow of gem stones.
People still believe that the only use of gemstones are for jewellery. This is the same in most developed countries as well. But most people are unware that around 
twenty varieties of gemstones out of the seventy found in Sri Lanka has a number of invaluable properties such as Piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity, antibacterial property and emission of negative ions and far-infrared radiation that could bring exorbitant riches to Sri Lanka if used for the manufacture of innovative products. For these products it is possible to use inferior quality gemstones which are found in most of the gem bearing regions in bulk quantities. Although gemstones are measured in carat weight (0.2g) these inferior gem material are measured in kilograms and sold for a petty sum. Yet when they are used for innovative products a worth of a gram some time exceeds a hundred thousand rupees. This is an enormous scale of value addition. One of the most common piezoelectricity used occasion is censor made of quartz variety of gemstone used to inflterning of airbags of vehicles during an accident.
Sri Lanka has the necessary expertise to develop these innovative products out of our own inferior quality gemstones and enrich the country’s coffers with much needed dollars. The experts are considered some of the world’s best. The biggest problem is that the country does not identify their trustworthy experts and there is no proper mechanism to get the service of the experts. As such, if the government seriously thinks about these novel aspects of value addition processes and true value of their experts who could develop these novel value added products out of gemstones, it would not be difficult to reach the three-billion-dollar income target from our own gem and jewellery industry.
(The writer is a former
Director General of the National Gem and
Jewellery Training Institute )
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