Contractors lambasted Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski at a Jerusalem Economic Club meeting last Wednesday over the municipality’s policies toward contractors in the city. Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel president Samuel Olpiner also sharply criticized the government’s actions.
Olpiner said, “There is complete anarchy. By failing to fulfill its contracts and commitments the government is bankrupting contractors. The previous government established a norm to halt payments in order to avoid increasing the deficit toward the end of the fiscal year. The Sharon government has been infected with the same illness. The government owes contractors over NIS 1 billion, and local authorities are following suit. The Ministry of Finance is utterly indifferent to our calls, while the banks are putting us into receivership one after another.”
Lupolianski opened the meeting with economic figures about the city’s situation. Jerusalem’s tourism industry has lost $4.5 billion in tourism revenue ($900 million in lost hotel revenue and the rest by accompanying sectors). Unemployment in the city is 11% and 16% in eastern Jerusalem.
Lupolianski attributed the city’s poverty to the many terrorist attacks in the city. He said 169 people had been killed and 2,008 wounded between October 2001 and June 2003, and the city’s business community had been hard hit.
Lupolianski said however, “Signs of optimism are beginning to appear in the city. We’ve received 80 applications to open business in the city in the past two weeks.” He promised that the municipality would make an effort to simply procedures and the bureaucracy in order to create a dynamic that would expedite business matters.
Mordechai Aviv Construction Industries CEO Mordechai Aviv, told the mayor, “We’re losing Jerusalem. No one wants to live here. No one is waiting in line to buy an apartment in the city. I’m stuck with 50,000 sq.m. of commercial space in the city center that I cannot lease.”
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on July 20, 2003