Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir predicted today that Israel’s gross national product would nearly double over the next ten years and that the country’s population would reach 4.5 million with a half million new workers added to the labor force.
Addressing a closed session of the biennial meeting of the Israel Manufacturers Association, Sapir presented an optimistic forecast for the nation’s economic development. He said the gross national product, now IL’32 billion, will reach IL 63 billion by 1983. He said that the adaptability of Israeli industrial workers to modern industrial changes could easily achieve that increase.
Sapir said that in the next ten years IL 145 billion will be invested in the economy of which IL 24 billion will be in the industrial sector. The industrial share of the general economy will reach 28 percent compared to 23 percent today, he said. He said he anticipated foreign investments in the amount of $20 million in the next decade.
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