Preliminary data released on December 6th by the Accountant-General Division of the Ministry of Finance showed a near-balanced budget for November. The deficit in the government's budget operations was only NIS 0.4bn (US$107m), or a surplus of NIS 0.2bn after financing activity is taken into account.

This leaves the year-to-date deficit to end-November at NIS 15.9bn, compared with the full-year deficit of NIS 42.9bn projected in the budget and compared with a deficit of NIS 28.1bn in the same period of 2009. This outcome primarily reflects strong tax revenue, which totalled NIS 180bn in the first eleven months of 2010, or 98.3% of the full-year budget projection-and compared with NIS 162.9bn in the corresponding period of 2009.

Expenditure, in contrast, totalled NIS 181.4bn in the year to end-November, only 86.6% of budgeted outlays. This represents a rise of only 2.5% over the parallel period of 2009, and half the average annual rate of increase in spending of the last five years. Typically, the Treasury runs a large budget deficit in December, sometimes pushing spending for the following year into the current one, to prevent the deficit coming in too far below target. It is likely that this tactic will be used again in December 2010.