Finance Minister Lists Three Measures to Strengthen Israel’s Economy

The year 1957 was marked by “an increased immigration totalling 71.000 persons and a reduction to the burden of security,” Finance Minister Levi Eshkol told the Knesset today in presenting Israel’s first billion-pound budget for the 1958-59 fiscal year.

The 1,160,000,000 pound budget draft is based on the assumptions that immigration during that period will be between 40,000 ad 50,000 persons, there will be no increase in defense expenditures and capital imports from abroad will not exceed the amounts of the previous year, Mr. Eshkol stated.

The Finance Minister said there were three main avenues toward improvement in Israel’s economic position. He listed them as, first, an increase in production with available facilities; second, encouragement of additional private capital investment by Israel’s providing assurances of reasonable profits” and confidence in the security of investments; third, an increase in exports which, he said, should reach $350,000,000 in the coming fiscal year.

To reach these goals, Israel must increase labor productivity, lower production costs and increase national savings, Mr Eshkol stressed. He also informed the Knesset that of a total of $2, 550,000,000 in capital imports from May 1948 to March 1957, about $1.000,000,000 was spent on security and on stockpiling while the remainder was made available for normal investment. Toffal investments during that period amounted to about $2,770,000,000, indicating that $bout Half of the total regular investments came from overseas sources with the other half from national savings, he declared.