In a speech that caused quite a stir in the Globes Israel Business Conference hall, opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu praised his economic doctrine and his plan for dealing with inflation and the housing crisis. In them in a serious way,” Netanyahu began.
According to him, “It is not possible to sustain this country if it is not strong from a security point of view. The problem is that it costs a lot of money, and in order to have money you need a strong and free economy. I made about 80 reforms, and even Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman defined them as revolutionary. This We boosted Israel’s economy from $17,000 per capita income to $55,000 at the moment. We passed Japan, Germany and Great Britain. We strengthened security and turned Israel into a cyber and intelligence powerhouse.”
● Mansour Abbas: “Tibi and Bibi work together, but under the table all these years. Enough with the games”
● Benny Gantz: “I asked myself this week night whether Ben Gvir even understood what was being said in the security forums”
● Gafni on the horizontal cut to fund the teachers’ agreement: “Promiscuous conduct on the eve of elections”
● Bank Hapoalim CEO Dov Kotler: “In my opinion, housing price containment is already happening before us”
Tel Aviv Mayor Huldai: “The light rail lines were supposed to be built quickly, and then Israel Katz arrived”
Netanyahu added that the economic power he created, according to him, is the one thanks to which Israel concluded the Abrahamic agreements. “Economic and military power also gave us political power. This opened the door for us to four peace agreements with Arab countries. Peace from power. We did not give up a millimeter. The iron triangle of military, political and economic power rests on the economic focus.”
In addition to this, Netanyahu referred to his time as finance minister in the early 2000s, after which Likud won only 12 seats under his leadership. “I paid a heavy price for major reforms we made, such as a massive cut in child benefits, which took entire populations out of the labor market, and this is a huge revolution that we are still in the midst of. So you were surprised that I took the finance portfolio, because they did not know my economic background as an MIT graduate and as an employee of one of the consulting firms the largest in the world in Boston.”
A commotion in the hall
At this point, a big commotion broke out in the hall, when demonstrators shouted slogans and waved signs against Netanyahu. After several moments in which his speech was interrupted, the chairman of the opposition answered them: “You are the same guys who wanted to leave the gas in the water. Thank you very much. If we were to follow your doctrines, we would remain with a threshold of under 17 thousand dollars per capita. This is Meretz’s method, to keep mouths shut. We tweet about it. We want freedom of speech and opening channels, not closing channels. They are not ready to face the facts.”
After that, Netanyahu continued his speech, but from time to time chants against him continued to be heard from the audience. “While we became almost the leading economy in terms of per capita income, inequality fell to its lowest point in 20 years,” Netanyahu said and added: “Why did we bring greater equality? Because people entered the labor market. There people earn much more than in pensions. In- You can have social welfare without a free market.”
the current economic crisis
The chairman of the opposition moved on to talk about the global crisis in the economy and presented a slide of the consumer price index – which showed that today it is nine times higher than during his time as prime minister. It reached below zero. The Central Bureau of Statistics says that, not me. In the Lapid government, inflation jumped ninefold. The mortgages became more expensive by more than NIS 10,000 per year. It’s unbelievable.”
At this point, Netanyahu explained how he intends to deal with the situation. He talked about freezing four “inflation generators” according to him: electricity, fuel, water and freezing property tax rates. “I intend to freeze all four of them and create a reverse circle,” he said. “This will affect all prices in the economy. Where are the sources for this? We will do it easily. There are tax surpluses of 60 billion shekels. In addition, we took the gas out of the water. In my estimation, the royalties will reach 10 billion shekels by the end of the year, and this will easily cover it.” .
Netanyahu added that “We have already rescued Israel from a global economic crisis. Do you remember the huge crisis of the dot com or the sub-prime? In 2020, Israel’s economy left dust for Corona. It was not a health crisis but a health and economic crisis of the highest order. Yair Lapid said Let’s not bring even five vaccines. I brought maybe five vaccines for every citizen. We brought millions of vaccines. But we also acted in front of businessmen and the citizens of Israel, because I saw that global interest rates were low. We could borrow and return to growth without jeopardizing Israel’s financial situation. A global crisis is not Excuse.
“We know how to manage it, and we have proven it. We receive the praise of the markets and even of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The results speak for themselves, under our policies Israel has become the eighth power in the world. As far as it depends on me, I will continue to do it.”
Netanyahu also said that “the governments led by me led a significant revolution in the State of Israel in a market economy. Now I am told that we are in a global crisis. This is no excuse. We are a small and agile mammal. If you know how to lead the economy, you take the necessary actions.”
The housing crisis: “We will release 300,000 units”
Regarding the housing crisis, Netanyahu said that “it is true that apartment prices have risen over the years, but in 2016-2018 we curbed the rise in prices, and look what happened in this government (prices rose by 19% – BL). They have no green idea how Managing an economy. It’s like letting someone riding a scooter fly a plane. They don’t understand. How did Yair Lapid tell me when he was a presenter? ‘Mr. Minister of Finance, explain something to me, I don’t understand anything about economics’ – and he proved it.
“The solution is the release of 300,000 planned housing units that are with the mayors. If we release such an amount to the market, it will provide an answer to more than a million people. What is the problem that has arisen in the last two years? The budget department and the municipalities are arguing, and a traffic jam is forming. On the first day of the government that we form, I will head a cabinet housing, and he will make one decision first: instructing the budget department to budget billions for the necessary infrastructure so that we can release hundreds of thousands of housing units to Israel. This is a tremendous and simple solution.”
In addition, Netanyahu stated that he intends to introduce free education for ages 0-3. “A government led by me brought free education to ages 3-6. Now we will bring free education to ages 0-3 as well. It costs a total of NIS 6 billion,” he said.
After his speech, Netanyahu was asked a number of questions by an elderly Danish Globes reporter.
Assuming you are elected and form a coalition, which economic prime minister will you be – the one of 2009 or depending on the partner parties?
“Our partnership has less influence than Mansur Abbas who received NIS 53 billion for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas associations. I intend to be the prime minister of all citizens, Jews and Arabs alike.”
Netanyahu did not answer whether the finance minister would come from the Likud or from another party.
Will the five-year plan in Arab society continue?
“Our plan will continue. We invested 20 billion shekels in Arab society, in infrastructure and education, but I brought it to the Arab residents. I take morning walks, and some residents in the Arab communities tell me – it was better with you. The money would have gone to aid and not to the associations that support Hamas. I took care of everything the citizens, and I will continue to do so.”
He added that “we have uniformity in the economic outlook to a very large extent. We have already made huge changes based on a common vision. What is most important is the direction of the captain. You need a captain with a clear economic direction, and I have it: free economy, continuation of reforms. These are not talks , but we did it. Between 2015-2020, Israel was consistently ranked eighth in the world by the University of Pennsylvania. They rank countries according to power. We are one thousandth of one percent of the world’s population. We made Israel a power thanks to the line that I led and fought for, and I even went down to 12 mandates in his wake.”
Summarizing his remarks, Netanyahu said that “there will be a national government under my leadership if the Likud public goes to vote. These elections will be decided on this question. If I can do it, I believe we will solve the economic problems quickly, we have already done it on previous occasions. We are committed to the free market economy, and we We understand that.”
*** Full disclosure: The conference is in cooperation with Bank Hapoalim, sponsored by Phoenix, Amdocs, BDO, Hot, Geely, Shufersal, El Al, Tnuva, Profimax, the Medical Organization, May Desk, Contigo, Cisco and with the participation of Mekorot, the Innovation Authority, Mobileye, Start Up nation central, Ashdod port and the electric company