The 12-month deficit of Israel reached 3.4%

The 12-month deficit reached 3.4%. This emerges from the budget execution report published today by the Finance Ministry for March. The publication today is relatively unusual, as the Ministry of Finance generally publishes data for the 10th of the month. It seems that this time the Finance Ministry was quick to publish it, as far as possible from the elections.
This is a slight decrease in the deficit, which stood at 3.5% in February, as predicted by the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Authority in advance. This is in view of the coming into force of the Green Tax Reform, which in effect raises the tax on vehicles, which are also a significant part of tax revenues.
The reform came into effect at the beginning of April and led to the introduction of car purchases for March at the expense of the rest of the year. Total revenues amounted to 28.8 billion
Of which NIS 2 billion is from the early purchases of vehicles. The treasury's concern is that the same advance will lead to the importation of cars in the next few months, which will increase the deficit.
Total government spending since the beginning of the year stood at NIS 98.7 billion, an increase of 11.3% compared to the same period last year. While civilian ministries' expenditures increased by about 12%, defense establishment expenditures decreased by 1.2%. The sharp increase in expenditure is due to factors in the Ministry of Finance in early payments to the end of last year, as is usually the case in light of the relatively high deficit that fell during 2018.
It is estimated that, after deducting NIS 2 billion in surpluses, the deficit for the last twelve months has increased to 3.6 percent in February. Now it appears that next month there will be a sharp rise. At the beginning of the year, the Finance Ministry estimated that the gap in the churches would be NIS 6.5 billion, and now it appears that the gap is higher. Only in the current quarter were revenues of NIS 1.8 billion lower than the updated forecast. When the NIS 2 billion of revenue is deducted, the Ministry of Finance faces a far more significant income gap than originally anticipated