Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening, at the press conference:
“Yesterday, I spoke a little about the Israeli economy. So I want to repeat a story that I told. Twenty-two years ago, I took over as finance minister in one of the worst economic crises in Israel’s history. And I could only gather about half a dozen European investors and I said, you really should invest in Israel. And I told them what we were going to do: that we were going to turn Israel from a semi-socialist economy into a vibrant free-market economy with all the reforms, market reforms. And they said, well, that sounds pretty good.
So they asked me, what do you think we should invest in? And I said, anything. Invest in anything in Israel because everything you see today will be a lot more expensive tomorrow, you can make a killing. Now, I don’t know if any of them believed me. At the time, the Israeli GDP per capita was about 17,000. Today, it’s passing 55,000 and soon will reach 60,000 dollars per capita annually.
The Israeli economy is very strong. I have terrific confidence in it. It is strong, it is innovative. It weathered two economic crises: the Corona crisis, it came out first in the world, and a two-year war. We have an enormous amount of investments. People are coming and they will continue to come for everything that we’re doing, not only the economy and the technology of today but the technology of the future: cyber, AI and so many other things.
Basically, my call to you, the investors of the world: Get on board now because we are about to take off. We’re about to take off with the technologies of the future. You got a glimpse of it in the amazing possibilities and the amazing achievement of Israel in the 12-Day War with Iran. You can see the things that Israel can do that amaze the world.
That’s part of what I’m talking about. We’re talking about the technologies of the future that are here today and are being developed in Israel. I described how one analyst told me, I couldn’t believe the numbers. I couldn’t believe the numbers that I was seeing. This cannot be an economy at war, but it is."
Video: GPO
