Americans have invested $25,000,000 in setting up private business enterprises in Israel during twelve months, it was reported at a press conference here today by Dr. Yeshayahu Foerder, leader of the Progressive Party in Israel’s Parliament. He emphasized that “the Israel Government is doing its utmost to encourage foreign private businessman” and pointed to a steadily rising volume of investments by Americans and other non-Israelis.
Dr. Foerder, managing director of the Rural and Suburban Settlement Co. Ltd. known in abbreviation as Rassco, a 17-year-old public company whose common stock is owned outright by the Jewish Agency, arrived in New York in connection with implementation of a new multi-million-dollar Rassco construction program. The program, designed to help Israel overcome a severe housing shortage and to expand the Israeli economy through employment-creating industries, will be undertaken with the participation of American groups and individual investors.
Elaborating on his statement that Americans have invested $25,000,000 within one year in establishing businesses in the Jewish state, Dr. Foerder said that these investments were made between April 1950 and April 1951. Those who bring industrial know-how to Israel and establish their enterprises on a sound basis, will make “a good profit, even by American standards, “he said. He emphasized that Israel has “unlimited opportunities,” for private investment and pointed to these favorable factors: a large pool of skilled labor, a friendly government and an ever-growing market created by large-scale immigration.
The new program which will now be undertaken by Rassco, he declared, will include the construction of an 800-unit middle-class garden suburb on top of Mount Carmel in Haifa, the expansion of Rassco’s low-cost immigrant housing plan and the erection of a large dairy and other industrial enterprises, Dr. Foerder disclosed, announcing also that Rassco would build the new Mizrachi College in Israel.
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