The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Swiss-based CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation, and the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC). The goal, according to a press release, is “harmonizing the official system used in Russia for the classification of polished diamonds with the standards and nomenclature applied internationally”. The agreement was signed on January 24, 2018.
The agreement, which aims to ensure that the system by which polished diamonds are classified and described in the Russian Federation are in accordance with the most widely accepted standards in the international trade, will set to “define the priority areas where harmonization is critical, and to formulate ways of achieving it in the most accurate way possible”.
The CIBJO Diamond Blue Book was the reference document used in the discussions. The Blue Book is “widely recognized as the most universally accepted delineation of polished diamond grading standards and nomenclature, along with the International Standards Organisation’s ISO 18323 Standard”.
