BICOM

The Knesset eventually approved the 2015-16 state budget in the early hours of this morning following a protracted plenary session which required voting on some 400 amendments submitted by opposition MKs.

Voting began at 3pm yesterday and continued until after 4am, when the government’s razor thin majority of 61 votes to 59 against eventually carried the budget. Failure for approve the budget by today’s deadline would have triggered a general election. There was a pause in proceedings after Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel accidentally voted the wrong way on one amendment, while an additional delay occurred when the electronic voting system displayed incorrect results.

The overall 2015 budget will be £55.5 billion, rising slightly to £58.4 billion for 2016. The deficit for 2015-16 will be 2.9 per cent. The major beneficiaries of the state budget include the Education Ministry, which will receive an extra £1.1 billion, with a particular focus on lowering classroom sizes. The Health Ministry will be handed a £774 million boost including money for a new hospital in Ashdod. Meanwhile, the Welfare and Social Services Ministry will also receive a significant budgetary increase, as will the Public Security Ministry including a sum for firefighters and increased policing in East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, a compromise was agreed between the Defence and Finance Ministries over the defence budget, which will receive an additional sum during the year once structural changes within the IDF begin to be implemented.

The government’s stated budgetary reforms also include plans for greater competition in the food market, speeding up of planning procedures for housing and significant, controversial changes to the natural gas industry.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon welcomed the Knesset’s approval of the budget, saying that it “addressed fundamentals problems in the Israeli economy and society.” However, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, a former finance minister himself, called the budget “a party for the boys” which is “passing around money from one hand to the next, based on coalition agreements.”