A five-year plan for the development of the Jewish economy in Palestine was discussed yesterday by the Budget Commission of the Nineteenth World Zionist Congress.
The plan, submitted by Israel B. Brodie of New York, president of the American Economic Committee for Palestine, outlines ways and means of improving the economic condition of the country to double the present Jewish population of 350,000 by 1940.
“Our destination, the widening and the deepening of our Palestine economic absorptive base, remains the same,” Mr. Brodie declares in his paper, “but our speed and our tempo must be accelerated. Jewish need in the Diaspora, and our social, political and economic fronts in Palestine demand it,” he added. “The flow of Jewish immigration to Palestine must be enlarged from year to year.”
The five year plan follows:
1) Establishment at once of an industrial bank to further consolidate the position of Palestine industry.
2) The Jewish Agency must find the way to secure the adoption by the Palestine Government of an enlightened tariff policy.
3) Substitution of Palestine-manufactured products for articles now imported to the amount of many millions of dollars.
4) Creation and furtherance of such public services and utilities in aid of agricultural colonization as would not be undertaken by private and quasi-public institutions, and which in other countries are usually carried out by the government.
5) Uniting of financial and technical forces of public and quasi-public institutions and even private individuals, into one great water utility which shall apply itself to the discovery and application of the water resources of the country.
6) Organization of a large cooperative comparable with the California Fruit Growers Exchange, to coordinate the citrus industry in Palestine and introduce more modern methods of irrigation, fertilization, packing and marketing.
7) Establishment of research laboratories in every field of agriculture, animal and poultry raising, and a geological survey of Palestine.
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