Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan today told the Israeli Parliament that he will soon submit a bill prohibiting free trading in gold. Such legislation, he said, is imperative so as to help check inflation.
The Minister made it clear that the government does not intend to confiscate gold, but will offer its owners dollar-based bonds in exchange. A carte blanche to combat the black market in gold and to halt inflationary tendencies was given to Mr. Kaplan by the Israeli Cabinet last week. As a result, the British gold sovereign dropped from 30 Israeli pounds to 20 in the black market.
Minister Kaplan also proposed that in the future immigrants be allowed to bring with them capital goods or invest their capital in machinery, raw materials or building materials which they would be permitted to bring into the Jewish state.
Mr. Kaplan then entered into a defense of the proposed four-month national budget, which later passed its first reading and is scheduled for final passage on Wednesday. He stated that the budget amounted to 16-17 percent of the state’s national income of 300,000,000 pounds, pointing out that the United States budget accounts for 25 percent of its national income, while in Britain 40 percent of the annual national income goes into the budget.
He denied charges by Mapam leader Moshe Sneh that Israel is facing bankruptcy, and insisted that the current economic situation is caused by the tremendous task of accepting and absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants. He appealed to the people of Israel to purchase savings certificates and to save whatever and whenever they could in both their own and the state’s best interests.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
