Israel’s economy should grow 4.1 percent in the coming year, fueled by exports, consumer spending and home construction, Israel’s Jerusalem-based Central Bureau of Statistics announced this week.
The bureau predicts that exports, which account for about half of gross domestic product, will climb 13.1%, after falling 12.5% in 2009, and that consumer spending will increase 5% and residential building by 11.1%.
Israel’s rebound from the global financial crisis has been aided by strong domestic spending and a technology industry aimed at global businesses, says Jonathan Katz, a Jerusalem-based economist for HSBC Holdings Plc, according to reports from Bloomberg’s financial and business news service.
Soli Peleg, head of the bureau’s macroeconomic division, says that last year Israel wasn’t hurt as badly as other developed countries were, and that this year the country is continuing to grow faster than the others.
The bureau’s growth estimate compares with the Bank of Israel’s April forecast of 3.7% and Central Bank Governor Stanley Fischer said last week that the bank was likely to raise that prediction.
The bureau also says that Israel’s economy expanded 0.8% in 2009 and growth this year is expected to be about the same as in 2008 when the expansion was 4.2%. In the four years preceding the global economic crisis, the economy expanded by between 4.9 to 5.7% annually.