Edited by: JV Staff
At a special meeting in Eilat on Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet approved a plan worth over NIS 500 million to develop the city of Eilat and the Hevel Eilot Regional Council area.
Following are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the start of the meeting:
“I know that all of you are waiting to hear about the plan but before that you certainly want to hear about something else – we are keeping the VAT exemption for Eilat.
With great vision, we have advanced from the wilderness and created a beautiful city. Today, we are going to take a very great step and jumpstart it into the future. We have discussed this for several good years and to my joy, assisted by all of the government ministers here, we are moving forward with a plan worth over NIS 500 million for immediate development. These are not promises; this is immediate money.
The first thing that we are dealing with is, first of all, health services. We are going to upgrade them with over NIS 150 million. We will upgrade the transportation infrastructure. We will establish tourist centers and we will make the coastal strip accessible to the public and improve it.
Perhaps the most important thing that we are going to establish here is a park to develop food from the sea. This is the food of the future. We cannot continue feeding humanity with protein from the land. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It pollutes and it is difficult. It will certainly remain but the protein of the future will be synthetic protein. However, that will take time until we know if it can exist. What certainly exists is the ability to take small fish that – in the sea – turn into big fish. This is the food technology of tomorrow – and it is already here.
There are two companies here in Eilat. We are going to form a concern and establish a center here that will provide Eilat with an extraordinary future. I want to turn Eilat into a center of knowledge and sea-based food technology.
We are doing all of this while paying attention to the question of transportation. We are committed to resolving this. Today we will establish a team to evaluate the entry of international companies to operate internal flights to Eilat. This means an immediate lowering of prices. This is great news for the development of competition, increasing tourism and flights to Eilat, and lowering prices.
Today we are establishing a ministerial committee on Eilat affairs, which I will chair. I intend to closely monitor implementation of the decisions and to verify the full implementation of what we decide.
And there is another thing – we are going to continue to move forward on the planning for a railway line from the center of the country to Eilat. This vision will also be realized. Eilat has a bright future. All Israelis share in the desire to see this future arrive as quickly as quickly as possible. Because of this, we are here.
Today, we again received confirmation of our credit rating from Standard and Poors. I say what the Finance Minister says all the time – The Israeli economy is strong and steady. There is great security in international markets in the way we are managing it. In my opinion, they also see the future here. Otherwise, they would not have confirmed the rating.”
(GPO)
