NEW DELHI, Aug 2: Global diamond major De Beers has been shortlisted by the Andhra Pradesh government for diamond prospecting in the state, a top company official said here today. "De Beers is one of the 18 parties shortlisted by the Andhra Pradesh Mining Development Corporation (APMDC) which had expressed interest for diamond prospecting in the 11 districts of the state," chief executive officer, De Beers (India) Alan N Campbell told PTI.While a joint venture with the state corporation is likely, the exact terms and conditions are yet to be worked out for which consultancy firm Arthur Andersen has been engaged by APMDC, he said."Most probably, it will be a 50:50 joint venture since in 1996, the state government reserved all mining rights with APMDC," Campbell said adding that the corporation has called for submission of bids in two months time, following which tenders will be opened in October.However, the company is apprehensive of whether APMDC would demand unsubscribed equity along with centraland state government royalty, besides development charges. "All these charges work out to a total of 33 per cent of turnover which along with a possible unsubscribed equity makes it unviable to invest the large amount of money needed for prospecting in a greenfield area," he said.Andhra Pradesh is the third state after Madhya Pradesh and Orissa which have preferred the global tender system to the first come-first serve process which is in practice around the world.De Beers is not happy with this system claiming that the advantage of early entry is lost in a tender process."The advantage of coming first is lost here. De Beers has been in India since 1994 when it started identifying possible diamond deposits," Campbell said. In its application to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, De beers had proposed bringing in about 500 million dollars for developing diamond mines in India with another 30 million dollars for exploration, he said.In 1994, De Beers had applied for two blocks - one inAnantapur-Kurnool districts and the other covering four adjoining districts of Nalgonda, Guntur, Khammam and Warangal which were yet to be approved."These two blocks were of 17,000 square kilometres (sq km) each whereas the new blocks put up now are of 5000 sq km each," Campbell said adding it would mean bifurcating the original blocks into smaller ones.
