The Russian government will abolish by decree its current export quotas for diamonds in about six months, Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin told a press conference on September 7. Kudrin is also chairman of Alrosa’s supervisory council.%%Russia, which is set to join the World Trade Organization in 2006, has been coming under pressure from the WTO to scrap all quotas and other regulations that provide a unfair advantage to local manufacturers, and are considered, therefore, trade barriers.%%According to news agency RIA Novosti, Kudrin, who was in Mirny, Yakutia to mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of diamonds there, claimed that Russia has diamond reserves to last another 50 years. He said that once Alrosa’s current contract with De Beers ends in two to three years the company will look for other markets. Alrosa had agreed in 2001 to sell De Beers up to $800 million of rough a year, but the European Commission raised monopoly concerns and the two firms agreed to cut back annual sales gradually over several years to $275 million a year.%%Alrosa produces more than 98 percent of Russia’s rough diamonds and about 20 percent of the world total. Its rough diamond production totals over $2.5 billion a year, and its production of polished diamonds exceeds $130 million a year. The company had net profits of more than $400 million and dividend payments of $65 million in 2004.%%World diamond industry figures who were in Russia to celebrate Alrosa’s anniversary, as Shmuel Schnitzer, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, and Gaetano Cavalieri, president of CIBJO, The World Jewellery Confederation, praised the Russian government’s decision for the beneficial impact it will have on the world diamond industry.