Debswana Diamond Company is curtailing   production at its Jwaneng tailings plant, media reports suggest.

In an interview to BloombergBusiness Balisi Bonyongo, Managing Director of Debswana, a joint venture between De Beers and the Government of Botswana said that the company has “leveraged down” production by “ a notch”. This is move is seen as a response to weak demand for rough and its softening prices.

“Rough-diamond prices dropped 6.9 percent in the last three months of 2014, the biggest quarterly decline in more than two years, and weakened a further 1.2 percent in the first three months of 2015 as banks tightened credit, forcing traders, cutters and polishers to sell more inventories,” BloombergBusiness pointed out in its report.

However, Bonyongo dispelled any apprehension that operations would be closed in “a repreat of 2008”.

 “We have built flexibility and agility into our operations and can reduce production without closing down,” Bloomberg Business quotes him as saying. “We have a robust balance sheet and can run this business without shutting. We are comfortable that we have enough resources and connected resources with banks.”

Also, Bonyongo did not see the current scenario as fixed for any great  length of time.  “Our partners say the market could improve in the second half and our job is to respond,” he went on to say in the same interview. “Our assets must be ready to ramp up, from our fixed assets to our trucks. When we reduce production, we have to be able to come back up quickly.’’

 Debswana estimates that its output will range from 23 million carats to 26 million carats annually until about 2028.