The government’s three-month-budget request for 27,400,000 pounds passed its first reading in Parliament last night following a report by Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan demonstrating that Israel’s economy was making a slow, but steady, uphill fight. The Mapai and the Religious parties voted for the budget and all other parties abstained.
The Finance Minister disclosed that 266,000 persons were currently paying taxes, as against some 85,000 who paid in 1948, Asserting that the production of electric power was an index to the country’s industrialization, he reported that the use of electricity had increased by 80 percent since 1947.
Industrial exports for the first seven months of this year, the Minister stated, were valued at 5,600,000 pounds while only 1,750,000 pounds worth of industrial goods were shipped from Israel during a like period in 1949. He reported an increase in agricultural production of 85 percent in the last five years, but admitted that the 100 percent increase in population had made the country more dependent than ever on food imports. Food imports had been curtailed recently with a resultant increased difficulty for the general population. He also revealed that the importation of capital goods had dropped from 37 percent to 28 percent while the importation of consumer goods had risen from 26 percent to 30.
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.
