Following the National Insurance Institute's report on poverty, which stated that hundreds of thousands of children were living below the poverty line, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the issue today in a Knesset debate on the issue. "Poverty is bitter and hard. You have set an agenda raising the question of when the war on poverty will begin. I have news for you. Where my term as prime minister since 2009 is concerned, this war started a long time ago," Netanyahu said.
According to Netanyahu, the two main poverty indicators - the proportion of families below the poverty line and the inequality index - have mainly declined since 2009.
"In the first indicator, there is a clear drop in the proportion of families, with a small rise (over the past year), and there is an even more significant decrease in the index for children. The inequality index has fallen clearly and consistently since 2009, with a slight rise in 2014. The reason that it is falling is that per capita GDP rose, and because more people are participating in the labor market. Why did it go up in 2014? Because there was a change that year in the child allowances. It is not like it used to be, when the eighth child got NIS 900. I do not regret that, and am not changing it, but we made a correction, which we eliminated in 2014, and that was when it went up. It has changed temporarily, and we changed it afterwards. The small change of one year made the difference. We have now corrected this by correcting the child allowances through one huge change: half of the supplement for children is given in long-term savings. The National Insurance Institute expects this to cause the decline that came to a temporary halt in 2014 to continue. These families will feel the difference in the coming year, and there is already an absolute fall in the number of poor children," Netanyahu said.
According to Netanyahu, another way of fighting poverty is to develop the economy. "We are doing everything to combat the cost of living, from the open skies reform to the cornflakes (food import) reform. Luxembourg, France, Spain, and Italy are all behind us in the OECD index. This proves that we have to persist. We have allocated resources. We will receive many resources, which will help us in education, welfare, and health," Netanyahu declared.
Netanyahu also linked the natural gas plan he is expected to sign tomorrow to the poverty issue, saying, "Development of natural gas is important for all aspects of poverty. The gas must not stay in the sea; we have to get it out of the earth. The gas plan will make it possible to exploit the earth's potential that we have gotten from nature. Without it, we will remain a small monopoly. The plan provides a change for development of the fields, more platforms, development of competition, and supplying the economy's needs. There is no way of doing this without the plan. The effect of exporting gas to other countries - Greece, Cyprus, and of course Egypt and Turkey - is something that we are looking into right now. This revenue will be used for the health and welfare of Israelis. Adopting the plan is therefore important, and I will give my answer tomorrow."
The Prime Minister went on to say that he would meet next month with the prime minister and president of Cyprus in a tripartite meeting. "We will talk about gas, the war on terrorism, and extremist Islam. We will talk about economic cooperation between the two countries. "
Netanyahu said, "In complete contrast to the portrayal of Israel as isolated in forums like the UN, Israel is in demand - a sought after country. In 2013, I met with the president of China, and since then, the ties with China have become closer. I met with the prime minister of India twice, including now in Paris, and we agreed to extend our cooperation. The same thing happened with the prime minister of Japan. India, China, and Japan are three giant countries containing a third of the world's population. I met with dozens of other leaders, including (Russian president) Putin. Concurrently with the traditional policy of voting against Israel in international forums, there is a great trend towards closer ties with Israel. I told the leaders with whom I met that I expect that this closeness to also be reflected in votes."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 16, 2015
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