The two-year budget is over. Minister of Finance Yair Lapid today announced that he has decided to abolish it, and revert to the system of annual budgets. The decision was coordinated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Finance Minister's bureau said, "Creating an annual economic work plan will make it possible to reduce the size of errors between forecasts of state tax revenues and domestic and global economic processes, and what happens in practice. It will also make it possible to locate and identify deficit mines in time and immediately create budget solutions and adjustments in the economic work plan for the financial year. The large differences between the biennial forecasts for state tax revenues and actual revenues led the economy to the huge overdraft with which we are now faced."
In view of the timetable for approving the 2013 budget, Lapid decided to present a budget through to the end of 2014 (17 months), which the ministry said would make it possible to deal immediately and thoroughly with the deficit and make structural changes to encourage growth.
Lapid is also making a historic decision at the Ministry of Finance by appointing its first woman director general: Yael Andoran, who was the head of Amitim Senior Pension Plans, which has over NIS 160 billion in assets under management. Andoran worked at the ministry's budget department for ten years, including a stint as deputy director when Netanyahu was finance minister. She has extensive experience, in part because she served in hard times when the ministry made sharp budget cuts.
In early 2012, Andoran became a venture partner at Viola Group. She managed Amitim in 2005-11 with great success. She was responsible for investments in non-financial companies and the financing of large deals, such as Amitim's participation in the syndicates that financed Oil Refineries' (TASE:ORL) hydrocracking facility, Shaul Elovitch's acquisition of the controlling interest in Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (TASE: BEZQ), as well as large investments in Bezeq, Azrieli Group Ltd. (TASE: AZRG), Ormat Industries Ltd. (TASE: ORMT), and Electra Ltd. (TASE: ELTR).
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 7, 2013
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