"Even if Israeli customs duties for certain goods are lower than those in the US, it's impossible to claim that this figure and the figures for import quotas are valid measures of the degree of competitiveness and openness of the Israeli economy," said Antitrust Authority director general Dror Strum today in response to a Business Data Israel (BDI) study published yesterday.
The BDI study claimed that Israel's economy is very open to competitive imports by international standards. In some cases, it is even more open than the US.
Strum said, "The main indicator isn’t an abstract openness to imports, but the degree to which the economy needs imports for manufacturing and maintaining competition. Even if the US did not import anything, it would still have real competition among scores of manufacturers in each sector. Israel needs imports for competition."
Strum said the number of strong monopolies per capita in Israel was much higher than in the US. This restricts competition, and requires a program of exposure to imports and a condition for competition in the economy.
BDI argued in its report that the Israeli economy's level of openness to imports was high because the effective customs duties were 0.9%, compared with 1.7% in the US, and that they were low by international standards.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on December 30, 2003