I have had my complaints about how the Israeli economy has been managed over the past year. And there are still several unfavourable signs. However, it is now time to stand up and to salute a success, an achievement which other countries could be jealous about.

You see it is not just that Israeli exports have risen 3% in the first half of 2019. The two key points are that:

1. “High-tech services exports made up some 60% of the sector’s revenue and 30% of Israel’s total goods and services’ exports.” The significance going forward is that these orders tend to be recurring. And that is good news.
2. Israel’s exports to Europe,  an enormous but very shaky economy, rose 12%. And despite everything, exports to the USA rose 3%.

Cautionary note: Israel’s exports are dominated by 10 large companies such as Intel. The latter had held up production in 2018. And there was a particularly large one-off contract to the UK in the chemical sector.

In any event, given the global worries over downturns, this is a very impressive performance. And this is one of the key reasons why Fitch, a credit rating agency, still grades Israel at A+