Budget deficit narrowed sharply in October to 5.5%

• Author: Oren Dori
• Published date: 08 November 2021
• Publication title: Globes (Rishon LeZion, Israel)

Although the narrowing of the deficit in recent months has been encouraging in the wake of the Covid crisis, Ministry of Finance officials say that the sharp shrinking in the deficit last month was due to an irregular NIS 4.4 billion budget surplus (compared with a NIS 20.4 billion deficit in October 2020) caused by technical reasons, because taxes worth NIS 8.2 billion paid in October were held over from September due to the holidays. Without this, October would have ended with a small deficit of NIS 3.8 billion.

Government expenditure in October amounted to NIS 36.7 billion. Since the beginning of the year, government expenditure has been NIS 383.4 billion, slightly higher than the NIs 382.3 billion, over the same period of...