Computers at Israel’s financial centers can no longer cope with soaring inflation. The electronic chips function but the screens on the display terminals can contain only 15 digits, hardly enough for the billions of Shekels that represent relatively modest sums of money.
The Bank of Israel and the commercial banks are considering abolition of Agorot. This is small change — 100 Agorot equal one Shekel — represented by two digits to the right of a decimal point. But bank experts say they also may have to shave some zeroes from Shekels to adjust to the limitations of the computers.
The number of zeroes increases in inverse proportion to the value of the Shekel’s purchasing power. That value dropped by 21.4 percent last month, the amount by which the cost-of-living index rose. It was the highest monthly increase since the Central Bureau of Statistics began publishing its monthly C.O.L. index in September, 1951.
Using that month as a 100 base, the C.O.L. index in September, 1984, reached 1,098,437, a 10,000-fold increase in prices over 33 years. The basic index is used to compute mortgages, life insurance premiums and other long-term loans linked to the price index.
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