Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz has made a U-turn, today announcing that the 2013 budget will be for one year, just two weeks after declaring that the next budget would also be a biennial budget.
Ahead of today's weekly cabinet meeting, Steinitz said that the 2013 budget would be for one year. "I decided to review the format of the biennial budget for 2010-11 and the budget for 2013," he said, giving as his reasons "the election year and the current extreme uncertainty about the risk of collapse of the eurozone."
Elections are due to be held by October 2013, but many in political circles believe that they will be held sooner. This means that a biennial budget for 2013-14 would be binding on the next government, which the Ministry of Finance considers undesirable.
Although Israel had biennial budgets for 2009-10 and for 2011-12, in practice only the latter was a real biennial budget, because the 2009-10 ran for only 18 months, after it was approved in mid-2009.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 3, 2012
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