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Minister of the Cost of Living: On the connection between Avi Dichter and the increase in the CPI - Walla! money

2023-05-17T12:17:31.047Z

Highlights: Chicken prices have risen and will continue to rise, milk prices have already soared, and fruit and vegetable prices have pushed the CPI higher. You wouldn't believe it, but one minister is responsible for all of this. Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter is responsible, or perhaps better to say, the Minister of the Cost of Living. He turned his office into the farmers' headquarters and the price for his dysfunction, we all pay. In fact, they cost us even if we decide to save and only live on bread and water: the index jumped by almost twice as much as forecast.


Chicken prices have risen and will continue to rise, milk prices have already soared, and fruit and vegetable prices have pushed the CPI higher. You wouldn't believe it, but one minister is responsible for all of this


Avi Dichter, Minister of Agriculture – or should I say: Minister of the Cost of Living (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Shavuot is one of the most fun holidays on our calendar: children dressed in white, with a bouquet of flowers on their heads and a tena full of fruits and vegetables, marching to kindergartens and schools to celebrate Israeliness at its best, or the holiday table, full of cheeses, pastas and other dairy products.

But even the enjoyment of the last Jewish holiday until the eve of 5774 was spoiled for us this year: in order to fulfill the tena wholeheartedly, you have to take out a mortgage or rob a bank, and when supervised dairy products cost like an appetizer in a restaurant, and the fruits and vegetables weigh like diamonds, it's hard to smile.

And that's not all, because Shavuot may be the last holiday on the calendar, but even after that, the celebrations of rising prices and the cost of living will continue, with additional price increases in Strauss and Tnuva products from the beginning of next month.

Happy holiday of dairy foods, the people of Israel. By the way, have you read the comptroller's report on the dairy farm? (Photo: ShutterStock)

For all this goodness, Minister ofAgriculture Avi Dichter is responsible, or perhaps better to say, the Minister of the Cost of Living, who turned his office into the farmers' headquarters and the price for his dysfunction, we all pay. When the supervised dairy products soared, to the sound of public outcry, Dichter managed to hide behind the skinny back of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who absorbed all the fire in his place.

We will not completely remove the responsibility from Smotrich, but the person who was supposed to make sure that the dairy producers did not go wild was the Minister of Agriculture, who did not speak up, when the dairy producers continued to raise even the products that are not supervised.

Dichter maintained wireless silence when the price of schnitzel was 50 shekels per kilogram before Independence Day (on the contrary: two weeks earlier, in response to an article we published here in Walla, his office claimed that no increase in prices was expected... That's how it is when you work full-time for the farmers and not for the citizens) and even now, when Tnuva raised the prices of Tirat Tzvi and Mama Chicken.

As mentioned, the poultry is also under the wingspan of his office (as are the other meat and egg products), but who cares if they riot. This is what happens when the Minister of Agriculture prefers to be the judge of the farmers, instead of dealing with the ills of Israeli agriculture that have brought us all this far.

Oded Forer, the previous minister of agriculturewho was very unpopular among the country's farmers, announced the reform, received the backing ofthen-Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and went for it with all his might.

He did not have time to complete the task, but as long as the sword of reform hung in the air, they tried to be as fair as possible, even if they fought it with all their might. The farmers knew and the minister knew that opening imports to competition could cost them dearly. Dichter, on the other hand, is busy with world-class matters, such as, for example, ahead of Independence Day, his office distributed festive surveys about Israelis preferring Israeli products.

So what if the State Comptroller issues a severe report on concentration in the dairy market, the dairy councils' control over milk production and marketing, and the suffering caused to cows – or a harsh report on the concentration of pesticides in fruits and vegetables? So the reviewer wrote. What does he even understand? After all, the Israeli cow is the most profitable in the world and the Israeli avocado gives everyone a heads-up. Why fix something very broken if you can ignore it? After all, the public is stupid and therefore the public pays, right?

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Mom, I know we can't buy, but am I allowed to at least smell tomatoes? (Photo: ShutterStock)

Just like with the fruits and vegetables, which cost us much more than we pay for them in the supermarket. In fact, they cost us even if we decide to save and live only on bread and water: in the latest index, which shocked even the greatest economists when it jumped almost twice as much as forecast, fruits and vegetables increased by a sharp 4 percent, carrying food prices and the index with them.

That is, even if you gave up fruits and vegetables at the supermarket, you will soon pay their rising price: through rising rents, a swelling mortgage or an overdraft that is getting more expensive.

Have you heard a word about this from the Minister of the Cost of Living? Emergency consultation to address the situation? Lowering tariffs, increasing imports? Nothing and nothing. Dichter is apparently busy preparing for Shavuot, perhaps spreading another survey of how much we love vegetables and fruits.

The Minister of the Cost of Living behaves exactly like the Minister of Economic Isolation, Bezalel Smotrich, who rolls a phrase like "fighting the cost of living" on his tongue like a mantra and blames the previous government or the protest movement for everything.

He talks high about lowering prices, but takes out the "Importers Law", the only shot that could have caused them to come down, from the Arrangements Law, and then rolls his eyes at the sky and doesn't understand why importers and manufacturers are beeping at him and all of us (or busy tweeting against the media, maybe she, too, is to blame for the cost of living?).

And when this is the Finance Minister's policy, it's no wonder that Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter continues to sleep standing, and in any case the Ministry of Agriculture is hardly a stop on the way to the next big ministry. On the other hand, if these are his achievements in the Ministry of Agriculture, perhaps we are very lucky that he (another) is not the Minister of Defense.

  • money
  • Opinions

Tags

  • Cost of Living
  • Avi Dichter
  • Minister of Agriculture

Source: walla

All business articles on 2023-05-17

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