Steinitz denies responsibility for deficit

Former finance minister Yuval Steinitz attacks his succesor Yair Lapid for thinking he has unlimited money.

Former Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz is denying any responsibility for Israel's huge deficit, which was created under his term, and says that his successor, Yair Lapid, "thinks there is unlimited money."

"You don’t judge a man when he's down," Steinitz told "Sof Hashavua" (Weekend) correspondent Yehuda Sharoni in an interview, which will be published on Friday. "He is acting in distress. Lapid could have welcomed that he received an economy with the best figures in the West. When Lapid was asked before the elections, 'Where is the money?' maybe he thought that money was unlimited and that everything could be done."

Asked about the NIS 40 billion budget deficit that he bequeathed to Lapid, Steinitz said, "This was no foul-up, but a mistake in the tax revenues projection. The size of the mistake is no more than 1-2% of the budget. The deficit is large, but relatively lower than in the US or Europe. Both the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Finance predicted it. This was a reasonable error of NIS 14 billion, which needed to be corrected."

As for the 2013-14 budget proposal, Steinitz says, "A lot more could have been gotten out of the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel), at least NIS 2 billion more."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 27, 2013

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013

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