Israel Matzav

#BDS_Epic_fail: BDS's impact on the Israeli economy is ZERO

The research center found that Israel’s merchandise exports to the European Union had nearly doubled since 2005. In the decade before, they averaged $7.8 billion annually, and in the nine years that followed they averaged $15.6 billion, despite a sharp drop in 2009 due to the world financial crisis.

“Foreign trade figures, mainly exports to Europe, show that the impact of efforts over the last decade to impose a boycott have not hurt the Israeli economy on the macroeconomic level,” concluded the study written by Eyal Kaufman.

Israel has been concerned that the BDS movement would succeed in rallying consumers, businesses and governments to shun Israeli products and services, and in the case of governments, deny it trade benefits. The movement has chalked up some successes, but the Knesset report said they did not have any broad impact.

Israel also showed no apparent impact from BDS in the form of foreign direct investment. FDI has grown 78-fold since 1990, with particularly sharp growth after 2006. The value of FDI reached $88.2 billion in 2013, from $52.6 billion in 2000, with the pace of growth accelerating to 58% in the last four years, the report found.

Israel is vulnerable to an economic boycott, with a third of gross domestic product generated from exports. Even worse, the EU accounted for 28% of Israel’s merchandise exports in the first eight months of last year, slightly more than exports to the United States.

Export to the European Union as a percentage of Israel’s total exports has declined slightly since 2000. But America’s weighting has dropped even more quickly, to 31% from 41%; meanwhile, non-EU Europe’s share has risen, as has the share of Asia’s emerging economies.

Labels: BDS, epic fail

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:46 PM