The finance minister wants an official from his Yesh Atid party on the Locker Committee.
Sources inform ''Globes'' that the offices of Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon and Minister of Finance Yair Lapid are at odds over the make-up of the Yohanan Locker Committee on the defense budget. Ya'alon opposes membership on the committee of Lapid aide Hillel Kobrinsky, Yesh Atid's chief of staff. Lapid is pushing for his appointment, after previously seeking the appointments of former Ministry of Finance budget director David Baruch, and Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MGDL) CEO Anat Levin.
A defense source told "Globes" today, "The committee is supposed to be a public committee, characterized by agenda-free professionalism. Kobrinsky's appointment will harm the committee's professionalism. To make it clear, he is an unfair mediator because he is the finance minister's confidant, and his membership has a political air, which no one wants. It is unreasonable for Lapid's chief of staff to be on this committee, just as it would be unreasonable for Ya'alon's chief of staff to be on a committee that is supposed to be professional and credible to make impartial decisions on such a complicated issue as the defense budget for the coming years."
Yohanan Locker is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former military aide and the brother of Prime Minister's Office director general Harel Locker. The committee will examine the components of the defense budget and propose a multiyear budget structure to succeed the 2007 Brodet structure. The committee is due to submit its recommendations to the government by the end of the year, but is unlikely to meet the timetable as its membership has not yet been finalized.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 17, 2014
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