The bigass jade stone found in Kachin State earlier this month has been priced at $5.6 million, the Myanmar Times reports, causing some consternation over the lower-than-expected value.
“They fixed the price from the thousands of miles away. They didn’t see the jade,” a director from the Myanmar Gems Trading Enterprise told the newspaper, referring to the appraiser firm, which wasn’t named.
Discovered in Hpakant, ground zero of the multi-billion dollar jade industry in Myanmar, the piece was said to weigh some 200 tons and was described as being “as big as two houses.”
Yadanar Taungtann company apparently owns the mine. When it was found, U Tint Soe, an MP from the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Hpakant, took it as a good sign as the company is partially owned by the government, which will get a cut once the stone is sold.
Most of Myanmar’s jade flows to China, but the industry has been plagued by labor abuses and shadowy accounting.
A report published a year ago this month by NGO Global Witness said that the value of jade production in 2014 alone was about $31 billion, more than twice previous estimates and nearly half of Myanmar’s entire GDP.
