"My responsibility as minister of finance is to prepare the country for a crisis, and I say to you as a responsible finance minister that crises will come, because economies are cyclical," Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon said this morning at an event at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to mark the release of the updated valuation of the state of Israel. "A country that doesn't grow is a country that declines, growth is security, growth is money to make the country stronger, for all the things you want. We aspire to reach 5% a year, and at present we're at 3.3%, so we need to make more effort," Kahlon added.
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange CEO Ittai Ben-Zeev talked about the change in the exchange's ownership structure and the plan to offer a minority of its shares. He said the exchange would enable every citizen of Israel to buy a parcel of shares worth a few thousand shekels.
According to an initial estimate by the stock exchange, the valuation that the State of Israel would achieve if it were floated on the exchange would be NIS 16 trillion. The estimate was made after the World Bank published valuations of 143 countries. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has now revised its estimate on the basis of a questionnaire completed by tens of thousands of Israelis. The questionnaire was designed to examine the public's confidence in various institutions and its degree of optimism about the future of life in Israel. According to the revised estimate, the country is worth 17 trillion, 638 billion, 763 million, 277 thousand and 54 shekels.
After the presentation of the updated valuation of the State of Israel, Deputy Minister of Finance Yitzhak Cohen and Israel Securities Authority chair Anat Guetta opened trading on the stock exchange.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 14, 2018
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