LARIMAR is a sign of The Dominican Republic’s indentity around the world, it’s one of the most rare & exclusive gemstone know it by the men until today. The attractive color as well as its hardness, aptitude to polished and his brightness make of this stone an excellent material for jewelry.

What you should expect about the LARIMAR market for the present and next year? That is very simple to guess if you know what is happenning right now on The Dominican Republic about this Semi-Precious Gemstone.

But first you must know this facts:

1- The most important, Nobody knows yet how many LARIMAR remaing underground. Could be LARIMAR for 20 more years or maybe is running out in a short period of time.

2- The deposits of Larimar named CHECHESES & FILIPINAS are placed in the Mountain range of Bahoruco, in the province of Barahona in the South part of the country. Those sites are the easy access by the highway Santo Domingo-Barahona.

3- The operators of the mine group themselves in two associations: The Cooperative, that has about 170 affiliated and the Association of Producers of Larimar that has 100 partners.

4- The goverment is going to give licenses to foreign companies for the exploration and operation of future deposits of LARIMAR to be discover.

5- Until today the extraction of the LARIMAR have not been regulated by the Dominican Goverment, and that’s about to change very soon!!!

Right now The Dominican Republic goverment is about to start a national strategy with respect to the artisan mining of the LARIMAR (Project of Support to the Small Mining, financed by the European Community, Program SYSMIN/LOME IV). The main goal of this project is the control of the sustainable advantage of the mineral resources and an operation environmentally adapted.

Near 4 million dollars would be destined by this project to improve and to modernize the present infrastructure of the mines.

What all this means is that nobody is going to operate and sell larimar under the present “OUT OF CONTROL” conditions. Also the miners are creating an unique association of producers in order to guarantee their incomes and to obtain greater benefits by means of highest prices than the present ones.

By Scarlette Salazar