"There are two things wrong with the two-year budget: first of all it's not for two years. It is the approval of a regular budget for two years with a single vote, and that's it; and there are legal problems," Knesset Finance Committee chairman MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) said in a special committee meeting on the two-year budget today. He officially submitted his objections to the proposal to Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz.
Gafni added, "The second problem is that the Ministry of Justice to its astonishment showed extraordinary flexibility in agreeing to change a basic law by means of a temporary directive. Changing a basic law by temporary directive! I haven’t regularly seen such flexibility by the Ministry of Justice's legal counselors, which should be praised. I'm only worried that the temporary directive will turn into something permanent."
Steinitz said, "Back when I was a professor of philosophy, I believed that longer planning periods should be established than exist now. Economic planning for an entity like a country must be different from a falafel stand. At a falafel stand, the planning period can be a week, and companies usually plan for a year. For a large entity like a state, where changes, reforms, and project implementation are on another scale, there is no logic for a one-year planning cycle."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 27, 2010
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