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Israel’s state comptroller warns of big business concentration
Israel’s State Comptroller Yosef Shapira, handed over a nine hundred page report yesterday to the Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, which covered a range of issues but placed particular focus on the concentration of Israeli business in large companies and the tax breaks they enjoy.
The State Comptroller’s Office has investigative powers and answers directly to the Knesset through regular reports on government operations. Receiving the report yesterday, Edelstein said that the Knesset would ensure that the concerns expressed are “thoroughly dealt with.”
One of the report’s major findings focused on the extreme concentration of big business in Israel. A quarter of registered companies belong to just twenty five business conglomerates. The report also specified that Israel’s largest ten companies comprise thirty percent of the marketplace. The report expressed concerns that this could lead to a dangerous level of risk, “since the biggest companies are those that borrow the most from the credit market and the capital market.” The report also complained that these same companies are “exploiting the tax breaks” handed out by the government. Shapira called on the government to “systematically assess” the cost of such benefits and criticised the lack of oversight, calling it “uneconomic conduct that harms the public interest.”
The report comes just days after Israeli global pharmaceutical giant Teva announced major redundancies despite having received significant tax breaks and benefits from Israel’s government during the past few years. However, following a meeting yesterday afternoon between the CEO of Teva and the chairman of the Histadrut workers union, it was announced that any lay-offs in Israel would be frozen.
The report also dealt with a plethora of other issues. Shapira warned that proper measures must be taken to prevent an ecological disaster stemming from natural gas extraction. He also criticised delays to the construction of Tel Aviv’s light railway system and a classified military project which is seven years behind schedule.