Why Is Israel So Rich? Page all

KOMPAS.com – Israel arguably the country most often hit by war. Apart from being in conflict with Palestine, Israel also has a history of hostility with its neighbors in the Middle East.

The roots of the conflict in the region have a long history. Israel was founded on May 14, 1948 over what is now Palestine after Britain left the area.

As a country that is always prone to conflict, what about the conditions the Israeli economy?

Israel is a country in the Middle East region whose industry, especially the manufacturing industry, has been relatively advanced since the 1970s, when Arab countries still relied on sources of money from oil.

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Quoted from the official page Israeli Ministry of Foreign AffairsThe industrial progress in that country cannot be separated from the large number of experts who exodus from European countries during the outbreak of World War II to avoid persecution.

Until the 1970s, industries that had grown rapidly in Israel included fertilizers, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, plastics and heavy metals.

In 2008, the country already had a manufacturing industry with a total of 384,000 workers, most of whom were skilled workers.

With limited areas, in 2008, Israel already has 11,000 factories that produce 58 billion US dollars, and half of which are exported worldwide.

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Even apart from the manufacturing industry, the agricultural sector in Israel is among the most developed in the world with very high land productivity due to the use of high technology.

Israel is one of the largest exporters of sophisticated agricultural equipment and livestock globally.

Technology company

Israel is also a country where technology companies thrive. In the 1980’s, many people who worked in Silicon Valley migrated to Israel.

Although already living in Israel, these Jews set up research and development centers for US technology companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Intel.

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Then, in the 1990s, skilled engineers also came from countries of the former Soviet Union to migrate to Israel, making the country even more endowed with an abundance of skilled human resources.

Israel records technology industry growth of 8 percent per year. New companies in the technology sector keep popping up like mushrooms in the rainy season.

This condition makes Israeli research and development (R&D) rankings always in the top 10 of the world.

The technology sector, which previously only contributed 37 percent of industrial products, increased to 58 percent in 1985, and again increased to 70 percent in 2006.

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Nearly 80 percent of technology products are exported abroad. The export of Israeli technology products quadrupled from US $ 3 billion in 1991 to US $ 12.3 billion in 2000, then to US $ 29 billion in 2006.

The country also receives a lot of funding for research and technology development from other countries, such as the US, Canada, Italy, Austria, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Turkey, India and Germany.

The number of large companies in the technology sector certainly contributes a large amount of income to the Israeli government in terms of taxes, sources of foreign exchange, or absorption of the number of workers.

Quoted from World Bank data, Israel’s total gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 was recorded at US $ 394.65 billion.

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As a comparison, Indonesia in the same year recorded a GDP of 1.12 trillion US dollars. However, if measured from its population, Israel’s per capita income in 2019 was US $ 43,588.

Indonesia in 2019 recorded a per capita income of 4,135 US dollars, far below Israel. Meanwhile, when compared to neighboring countries, Israel is also a landslide superior.

In 2019, the total GDP of Jordan was US $ 44.53 billion with a per capita income of US $ 4,405, and Egypt US $ 303.09 billion with a per capita income of US $ 3,019.

Then, Saudi Arabia was 792.96 billion US dollars and its per capita income was 23,139 US dollars.

For information, developed countries usually have per capita income above US $ 30,000. However, per capita income is also not a single standard for a country to be said to be a developed or developing country.

Several other measuring factors include the availability of infrastructure, poverty rate, unemployment rate, illiteracy rate, and maternal and infant mortality rates.

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