In the first half of the current year, there was an increase in investment in Israel, even though the country was at war on several fronts in Gaza and Lebanon, and was experiencing tension in relations with Iran, which in some cases had an armed form of expression.
Between January and June 2024, Israel concluded overseas trade deals totaling $11.8 billion. The relevant information was released by the country’s finance ministry last Tuesday, December 24, in its annual foreign investments report.
The volume of deals in the mentioned category in the first half of last year in the specified country amounted to $7.3 billion.
It is worth noting that the information on the amounts of external financial injections does not take into account the one-time investments of Intel Corporation in Israel in the amount of $15 billion.
Shmuel Abramzon, chief economist at the country’s finance ministry, said that the data for 2024 demonstrate the tendency towards an increase in the number of foreign investment transactions to Israel. It was also noted that the mentioned tendency is expected to be supported by the improvement of the situation in the area of security and the political state of affairs.
Excluding investments from Intel, the total volume of overseas trade deals in Israel last year amounted to $17.9 billion. It is worth noting that this indicator is the lowest since 2019.
The scale of the decrease in foreign financial injections in Israel last year was higher than the 20% global decline reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Israel, the efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to weaken the judiciary and the war triggered by the Hamas attack in October 2023 became factors impacting the dynamic of raising overseas investments.
Last year, the United States was the leading source of financial injections into the mentioned country. Israel also raised significant amounts of investments from the United Kingdom, India, and France.
Last year, the largest foreign investment deals in the mentioned country were the above-mentioned Intel’s financial injections in the wafer fabrication site in Kiryat Gat, south of Tel Aviv, the merger of Imperva Inc. with French corporation Thales SA, which totaled around $3.6 billion, and a $1.2 billion investment by India’s Adani Group in the port of Haifa.
Almost half of the specified overseas financing is intended for the semiconductor industry. Significant investments were also received by the Israeli information technology and life sciences sectors.
As we have reported earlier, Nvidia to Acquire Israeli Startup Run:ai.
