Finance Min. to deliver NIS 11 billion, blamed for ‘distorting reality’

“You can do a thousand presentations,” Yisrael Beytenu MK Evgeny Sova said. “But the feeling among the general public is bad, they are not getting any help.”

By HAGAY HACOHEN
INDEPENDENT BUSINESS owners and workers from the tourism sector call for financial support from the government, outside the Finance Ministry in the capital on June 30. (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
INDEPENDENT BUSINESS owners and workers from the tourism sector call for financial support from the government, outside the Finance Ministry in the capital on June 30.
(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
The Finance Ministry geared up to deliver an additional NIS 11 billion on Tuesday to answer the mounting needs of the country, especially in the defense and education sectors. Yet during a debate at the Knesset Economy Committee, the ministry was slammed for allegedly “distorting reality” with presentations.
“You can do a thousand presentations,” Yisrael Beytenu MK Evgeny Sova said. “But the feeling among the general public is bad, they are not getting any help.”
Yesh Atid MK Boaz Toporovsky said the ministry seems “removed from reality” when it suggests the COVID-19 financial crisis is almost behind us and complained that people “are not getting help.”
The ministry’s director-general, Keren Terner Eyal, quipped that “for NIS 1,875 a person can fill out an Excel line.”
Terner Eyal presented the committee with the following figures: a deficit of between 13.3% to 14.5% of the GDP, which is expected to slowly decrease as the economy improves. Social benefits to the tune of NIS 59b. have already been given to business owners and the self-employed, while 45,000 employers, so far, asked to get a grant to encourage employment which is meant to help 350,000 workers to return to work.
The current model of sending people to unpaid leave was attacked on all sides as reports are mounting that many citizens, facing personal instability as schools open and close, cities placed under lockdowns and then reopened, opt to stay home and mind their children or collect unemployment benefits until something much better comes along.
“We are creating a generation of people who will not know what to do when their unpaid leave is over,” Terner Eyal said.
Vice head of the Manufacturers Association Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin said “it is time to announce the death of this model,” citing that factories are unable to hire workers with unemployment benefits given until June 2021.
The Israeli model could be replaced with what is known as “the German model,” which allows employers to hang on to workers for flexible hours but keep them in their books while the state pays a portion of their salary. This saves the German state unemployment benefits, keeps people working and gives German factories a chance to meet demands as they have workers to produce items as needed.
The ministry is expected to deliver the NIS 11b. to cover the needs of the defense sector (NIS 3.3b.), the disabled community (NIS 1b.), as well as education, and paying the government’s own suppliers for services rendered.
The country still does not have a budget for this year or the next, and is currently amid the 100 extra days of grace before it must declare elections – unless a budget is passed.
This unprecedented situation means that these NIS 11b. are not a part of the existing budget, which is based on the one the country had last year, and that the ministry is “walking in thick fog,” as The Marker reported on Tuesday.
Israel is on its way to becoming the “Jewish Lebanon,” it warned, seeing as the country is deeply divided between communities, unable to carry out basic functions of the state such as passing a budget or having a unified COVID-19 policy.
The country currently has the biggest deficit in its history, but nobody knows what is the limit it doesn’t wish to pass. Seen in this light, the billions now being handed out are far from enough.


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