(Bloomberg) --
Israel's Finance Ministry plans to increase its coronavirus economic aid package to 100 billion shekels ($28.5 billion).
The ministry published its proposals on Friday night, including a legal change to allow the government to spend a further 14 billion shekels. Israel had previously allocated 80 billion shekels in aid.
Key aspects of the plan:
- 6 billion shekels of grants to help “a fast return” for workers to their jobs
- Aid for industries at an “especially high risk” of not returning to normal operations soon, including 4 billion shekels of government-backed loans
- Government-backed loans for small- and medium-sized businesses will increase to 14 billion shekels
- 2 billion shekels in financing for technology firms and state guarantees for vendor credit worth $750 million
- A broad push to advance infrastructure projects, such as higher connectivity to fiber optic networks, and digitizing more government services
Israel did relatively well compared to developed nations in containing the pandemic's spread, and is now working to repair the damage done to its economy. It started reopening last month after unemployment surged past 25%, and the government has continued on that trend given that nearly 70% of Israel's 16,436 coronavirus cases have recovered and the rate of new infections keeps declining.
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