If the State of Israel were a public company traded on the stock market it would be worth some 17.6 trillion shekels ($4.8 trillion), Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon announced Tuesday at a special event hosted by the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
At the event, celebrating the exchange's 65th anniversary, the TASE called on Israelis to participate in the evaluation of the economy's "biggest public company" – the state itself.
Using a model developed by the World Bank, the TASE calculated Israel's estimated wealth as NIS 16 trillion ($4.3 trillion), but when the public's assessment was factored into the equation, the figure rose to NIS 17.6 trillion ($4.78 trillion).
The World Bank's methodology was outlined in a study issued in January, titled "Changing Wealth of Nations." The study tracked the wealth of 141 countries between 1995 and 2014, but Israel was excluded from it, leading the TASE to conduct its own poll based on the same parameters.
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange CEO Ittai Ben-Zeev explained that the poll's questionnaire was designed to examine the public's confidence in various institutions and its degree of optimism about the future of life in Israel.
Tens of thousands of Israelis participated in the survey, he said.
The polling found that 77.9% of Israelis believe Israel's economic future lies with the technology sector. Some 62.8% of Israelis said national security is the most important parameter by which economic prosperity can be predicted, and 47.2% believe the standard of living will continue to improve.
The survey further found that 39.2% of Israelis believe in their country's health care system, and 35.3% of the public believes the educational system will continue improving.
Speaking at Tuesday's event, Kahlon noted that Israel's record of uninterrupted economic growth and its falling level of debt-to-gross domestic product ratio were encouraging, but warned that no economy's future is 100% secure.
"Economy is, by nature, cyclical and there is no insurance policy for anyone," Kahlon was quoted as saying by the financial daily Globes.
"We've seen what happened in Turkey: One move by [U.S. President Donald] Trump created a roller coaster. At the moment, our situation is good, but economic crises have happened and will happen. My responsibility as the finance minister is to prepare the country for a crisis.
"A country that doesn't grow is a country that declines, growth is security, growth is money to make the country stronger, for all the things you want. We aspire to reach 5% [growth] per year, and at present, we're at 3.3%, so we need to make more effort," he said.
