Israel's national budget deficit for September 2020 stood at 14.9 billion shekels ($4.4 billion), a 780% year-on-year increase. In September 2019, the deficit totaled 1.9 billion shekels ($560 million).
Starting in March 2020, the unfolding coronavirus crisis began making itself felt in the Israeli economy and budget activity. It has had major effects both on government expenditures and government revenue from taxes.
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The deficit for the first nine months of 2020 has reached 102.4 billion shekels ($30.2 billion), compared to 31.1 billion shekels ($9.1 billion) for the same period of 2019. In the past 12 months, the national deficit has grown to 9.1% of the GDP. In September, the government brought in 23.9 billion shekels ($7 billion) from the local market, as well as raising half a billion shekels more abroad.
In September 2020, government expenditures totaled 43.2 billion shekels ($12.7 billion). Since the start of 2020, the government has spent some 300 billion shekels ($88.4 billion), 42.9 billion shekels ($12.6 billion) of which went to fighting the COVID crisis.
Government revenue for September 2020 totaled 28.3 billion shekels ($8.3 billion). Revenue for the first nine months of 2020 stood at 233.7 billion shekels ($69 billion), nearly 10% less than in the first nine months of 2019.
In related news, mandatory quarantines cost the economy 2.6 billion shekels ($767 million) in September, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee was informed on Monday.
In a meeting of the committee, a group of senior officials from the manufacturing sector led by president of the Israel Manufacturers Association Dr. Ron Tomer, threw their support behind an initiative from committee chairman MK Zvi Hauser to shorten quarantine for essential workers to 10 days, and quarantine for non-essential workers to 12 days.
The IMA presented the committee with figures showing that 7% of workers in essential sectors were in quarantine. The representatives told the committee that more than half of Israel's industrial companies had reduced output and that 48% were struggling to keep up with orders because of an employee shortage due to quarantine.
"Israel's system of quarantine is killing the economy," Tomer told the committee.
Economist Eyal Toledo of the Finance Ministry's Budgets Department told the committee that the ministry had updated data which indicated that shorter quarantine times would save the economy some 750 million shekels ($221 million) per month.
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