Israel Cabinet Discusses Proposals for Halting Inflation

The Israel Cabinet met today for the third time since Sunday to discuss the country’s economic situation and to hear a report by a Ministerial committee on plans for fighting the inflation and improving the economic situation.

The discussion will be continued at still another meeting of the Cabinet next Sunday when the Minister will mold their final proposals for checking Israel’s deepening economic crisis. The government is expected to put these proposals, in the form of a “new economic policy,” before Parliament on Monday.

Negotiations between representative of the government and the Jewish Agency on a legal status in Israel for the Agency will be resumed next week, an Agency spokesman said today. He revealed that the American Section of the Agency has asked for a postponement of the meeting of the Zionist Actions Committee from next month to May. The Agency plenary session has already been advanced to March 12, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the Government-Agency coordination board on immigration and absorption met today under the chairmanship of Premier David Ben Gurion and heard a report on recent developments in Youth Aliyah and the prospects for increasing this immigration. Itzhak Raphael, Agency immigration chief, was instructed to draft plans for increasing the immigration of youth and professionals.

The coordination board decided that the government health department shall assume responsibility for medical examinations and for medical care of Israel-bound immigrants in all parts of the world. The board also drafted a set of principles governing the participation of prospective immigrants in their transportation costs.