ICA President I.Z.Eliezri who made this suggestion while addressing the gathering of eminent jewellers from all over the world, argued that the world population was not going down, while the number of women who would like to wear beautiful jewellery was at an all-time high. Therefore this industry and trade should continue to grow. If they faced recession, the reasons for the same should be found elsewhere.

The trade and industry should identify such obstacles and remove them, so that prosperity can once again return to this business which it enjoyed in the seventies and eighties.

This, he added, is the aim of ICA and in order to achieve it, co-operation of organisations like AGTA and CIBJO as also of various other national and international associations andlaboratories should be sought.

If the coloured gemstone business passed through unpleasant times during the last two years, it was, according to him, due to two factors:

i) Unsatisfactory system of informing the customers at the buying stage, and
ii) the tendency of laboratories to deal with chemistry and technology of enhancement, rather than on the effect such enhancement brought to the stone and its beauty.

This will have to change ICA should involve itself in changing these attitudes. It should develop with the laboratories a systematic classification of measuring and describing enhancement by quantity and quality rather than by examining chemistry and technology. The trade has to concentrate on appearance of the gemstone, viz. its beauty by checking colour, clarity, cut, durability and neutrality of the stone and its enhancement.