At a Yisrael Beitenu faction meeting this morning, Israel's Minister of Finance unveiled the financial assistance he aims providing small businesses and the self-employed who have suffered financially from the Omicron epidemic over the past two months. Liberman said that the package is designed for small and medium sized businesses with an annual turnover of less than NIS 60 million.
Liberman said, "Whoever can prove a 35% fall in turnover in January-February, then in such cases we will grant assistance of up to NIS 600,000."
The assistance will be provided in one payment that will include a social grant, a grant for fixed expenditure, a grant to encourage employment and an exemption from municipal tax. In the past businesses received all these grants separately. Businesses will be compensated only for January and February, even though the Omicron variant reached Israel in late November and was spreading exponentially by mid-December, when Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called on people to work from home.
LAHAV - the Israel Chamber of Independent Organizations and Businesses president Roi Cohen, expressed dissatisfaction with the aid package. "This entire plan is an attempt to play with numbers and set criteria designed not to compensate businesses. They need to go with the plan that was set after Operation Protective Edge (in Gaza in 2014) which set a threshold of a 25% fall in turnover. Somebody who decides not to compensate a business that lost 20%-30% does not understand at all how a business is run. Let's see what self-employed person can meet 100% expenditure and 70% income."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 28, 2022.
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