Jerusalem, Dec 30: An Israeli business report claims that the Israeli economy is "very open" to foreign competition and that Israeli customs duties are low compared to European and US levels.

Business Data Israel (BDI), an international business information tracking service co-owned by Dutch, French and German commercial interests, found that Israeli purchase tax is now the largest tax component on imported goods, Israeli business paper newspaper Globes reported today.
The report found that the past decade customs duties have been progressively lowered, domestic manufactures are significantly less protected and Israeli markets are not open to widespread and more sophisticated competition from equivalent foreign imported products.
The low customs duties now prevalent in Israel, says BDI's co-CEO Tehila Tamir-Yanay, are the result of a lengthy process, accelerated in the 1990's by government- initiated customs tax reductions and Israel's free trade agreements with the US, EU, Canada, Mexico and Turkey which have resulted in customs exemptions on imported manufactures from these countries.
BDI found that consumer goods have the highest customs tax (3.9 per cent), compared to investment goods (0.7 per cent) and manufacturing components (0.4 per cent).
The report also found that effective Israeli customs tax was 0.9 per cent lower in Israel than in the US (1.7 per cent), and that Israel uses quotas less often than the US and EU (eg clothing and textiles), indicating that in recent years Israeli markets are more open than their US and European counterparts.
Bureau Report