James Picton, a London-based analyst who was a featured speaker at the World Diamond Conference in Perth , Australia , in Dec. 2003 said the coming decade is "probably the most sustained healthy period of supply and demand from the point of view of the diamond producers that I can remember. It can only drive prices up by a very least 20 percent in real terms and probably closer to 40 percent over that period."

According to Picton, who studied diamond prices from 1949 to the present, the price of rough diamonds quadrupled between 1949 and 1977, and continued a steady uptrend broken only in 1980-1082 and 1997-2001. Picton set a base mark of 100 to represent 1949 prices and says that mark is now moving towards 2,250.

"De Beers is advertising in both China and India where there are large middle classes and diamond sales are increasing," says Vandersande. In 2002, worldwide diamond production fell $1 billion short of demand, forcing De Beers to use up part of their stock to fill the demand gap. The production gap is expected to reach $3.5 billion annually by 2012.

Canada already has two major diamond mines (Ekati and Diavik) that are supplying a significant part of world diamond production. Mountain Province's diamond discoveries could become one of the next ones - and even with the years-long schedule to reach production, there is plenty of time to cash in on the anticipated diamond boom.
http://www.thebullandbear.com/resource/pdf/RI-0204.pdf