Israel is a solid investment, despite the many challenges it faces, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told the “Innovate. Invest. Israel.” conference in New York on Monday.
The one-day conference, organized by the Israeli Finance Ministry, together with The Wall Street Journal, Barrons and the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry, hosted dozens of business leaders and economists from across the U.S. and Israel.
“No other country got such an offer from The Wall Street Journal, and there is no country in the world that would not want such exposure,” Steinitz told Israel Hayom after the conference.
The conference brought together world economic decision makers, officials of firms invested in Israel, private equity owners and venture capitalists, as well as global financial institutes and chief analysts. Among the keynote speakers were News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, Citigroup Inc. Vice Chairman Lewis B. Kaden, Better Place founder Shai Agassi, and Nobel Prize laureate economist Daniel Kahneman.
Steinitz told the conference that Israel was known as a country that bounces back quickly after crises, and outlined the reasons it was a good investment: “First of all, we have the best human capital—Israelis always think outside the box, and therefore Israel is first in the world in start-ups per capita. Government incentives—corporate taxes for exports for firms in the Tel Aviv region are 12 percent and in the periphery they might be as low as 5 percent, which is the lowest tax rate in the modern world.”
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