Dear Colleagues!

The past six months were important and defining for the Russian jewellery sector. The fight of the local producers to stop issuing the licenses for the export of gold for processing it into jewellery ended up successfully for us – according to the Russian government’s resolution, all operations based on the tolling scheme should be stopped as from February, 17, 2009. As import shared a significant part on the Russian market in the past few years, one can suppose, that from now on it will be replaced by high-quality products of the foreign brands.

At the same time the leading Russian jewellery producers strive to find their niche on the world jewellery market, especially in the luxury segment. This was vividly shown at the jewellery festival in Kostroma, were the best items of the year that became prize-winners of the national competition “Golden Boat. The Recognition of the Jewellery Capital”, demonstrated the international standard.

The prize winners can be viewed in this issue of the magazine.

You can also find here a review of the legal innovations on the jewellery markets of the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, new designs demonstrated at the autumn/winter exhibitions, as well as other exciting materials.

In general, the Russian jewellery market was affected by the world financial crisis first of all with the decreasing of the production volume of the large companies, which had actively used credits. As far as sales decrease concerned, it’s quite relative, and leading jewellery companies are optimistic about their future.