Israel market snapshot: Cross-border competitor

May 14, 2018, marked 70 years since Israel’s founding. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the population was 806,000 that year, and it grew at an average rate of 3.8 percent from then through 2007.

The agency projects that the population will reach 10 million by 2030. Metropolitan areas are home to 92.4 percent of the population, which is projected to continue the urbanization trend at a pace of 1.64 percent annually from 2015 to 2020, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.

Despite that growth, Israel’s population has not kept pace with the demand for science and technology research, development, and commercialization. The labor force totaled 4.02 million in 2017; services employed 81.6 percent, followed by industry (17.3 percent) and agriculture (1.1 percent). While the 2017 unemployment rate was just 4.3 percent, down from 4.8 percent in the previous year, 22 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of $7.30 a day.

Calculated in 2017 dollars, Israel has seen its GDP rise from $294.5 billion in 2015 to $306.1 billion in 2016 and $315.6 billion in 2017, the World Factbook reports. This translates to growth rates of 2.6 percent, 4 percent, and 3.1 percent, respectively, for those years. Per capita GDP, again calculated in 2017 dollars, was $35,200 in 2015, $35,800 in 2016, and $36,200 in 2017. (All figures are purchasing power parity GDP.)

Services, industry, and agriculture generated 69.5 percent, 26.6 percent, and 2.3 percent, respectively, of GDP in 2017, and the industrial production growth rate was 4 percent. Leading industries include high-technology products (notably aviation, communications, computer-aided design and manufacture, medical electronics, and fiber optics), wood and paper products, potash and phosphates, food, beverages, and tobacco, caustic soda, cement, pharmaceuticals, construction, metal products, chemical products, plastics, cut diamonds, textiles, and footwear.

Israel operates at a trade deficit, with $60.6 billion in exports against $66.76 billion in imports for 2017. Leading commodities include machinery and equipment, software, cut diamonds, agricultural products, chemicals, textiles, and apparel on the export side and raw materials, military equipment, investment goods, rough diamonds, fuels, grain, and consumer goods on the import side. The United States is Israel’s largest trading partner for both imports and exports, followed by the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, China, and Belgium (exports) and China, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Italy (imports).

Additional details and export support are available via the Export.gov Israel Country Commercial Guide, the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.–Israel Business Initiative, and Business Israel, a project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There are also geographically specific opportunities, such as the Israel-Florida Innovation Alliance, a joint venture of the Israel Innovation Authority and StartUp Nation Ventures LLC., which is based in Florida.

Ceramic sector trade programs and opportunities

There are also resources for bilateral research collaboration and joint ventures specific to science and even to ceramics in particular. The United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation has granted $600 million to 5,000 research projects since its inception in 1972. It funds the Joint Program in Ceramics in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

As described on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem website, the program “supports fundamental scientific research in ceramics (e.g., oxides, carbides, nitrides and borides), glass-ceramics, inorganic glasses, ceramicbased composites and inorganic carbon-based materials…Research to enhance or enable the discovery or creation of new ceramic materials is welcome. Development of new experimental techniques or novel approaches to carry out projects is encouraged.”

See the directory entries for the Israel Innovation Authority and Israel National Nanotechnology Initiative for further trade resources, including databases of Israeli researchers and companies, a partner matching service, a list of calls for proposals, and a page dedicated to resources for strategic initiatives between Israeli entities and companies in the Americas.

Source: CIA World Fact Book