Eshkol Predicts Greater Returns for American Investors in Israel

Greater returns for American investments in Israel because of the recent liberalization of Israel’s law for the encouragement of capital investments was predicted here last night by Levi Eshkol, Israel Finance Minister, just before he departed for Israel. During his visit to this country he was a featured speaker at last week-end’s National Mobilization Conference for Israel Bonds at Washington.

Mr. Eshkol told newsmen last night that during the “past 12 months alone, some $2,000,000 in dividends was paid to foreign, mainly American, investors in Israel enterprises.” He noted that as production increases, with the assistance of capital investments, dividends will increase and will be swelled by new tax and other benefits recently incorporated into law.

Speaking of the bond conference, Mr. Eshkol said that he was taking back to the people of Israel a “message of encouragement.” Pointing out that the 1,000 American Jewish leaders at the parley had pledged to sell $35,000,000 in bonds by the end of 1955, the Finance Minister declared that he would report to his government and people “that American Jews are prepared to give us the fullest moral and material support in meeting our two most pressing problems: the need to maintain economic development in the face of a heavy burden of defense, and the urgent necessity to admit at least 50,000 Jews from North Africa.”

Yesterday, before he left, Mr. Eshkol was the guest of honor at a reception tendered him by the Zionist Organization of America. Abraham Goodman, acting president of the ZOA, who presided, and Jacques Torczyner, national chairman of the Word Zionist Affairs Committee, in addresses, pledged intensified and maximum support of the ZOA membership to the efforts to finance mass immigration of Jews from North Africa to Israel. Mr. Eshkol stressed the tasks confronting each individual American Zionist in increasing his contributions for the absorption into Israel of large numbers of North African Jewry and to help consolidate Israel’s economic structure.