Economy Minister Nir Barkat has blamed soaring consumer prices in Israel on a political conspiracy between the leaders of the protest movement against the judicial overhaul and big business, designed, he says, to both undermine the Netanyahu government and attack him personally. In a television interview on Sunday, Barkat asserted that "the protestors want things to get worse here. They want the public to suffer in order to prove that our government is not doing its job. And therefore some of the protest leaders and their partners, the big monopolies, have organized together. I feel that they are waging a campaign against me that serves their political agenda." Barkat called the development "infuriating." Barkat recently established a committee together with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich designed to investigate the reasons behind the unending climb in Israel's cost of living, one of the highest in the world. Smotrich said that it was intended "to gather all the existing data on all the major manufacturers, importers and retailers in the market" in order to probe the factors for high prices and presumably take action against them. A previous director-general of the Finance Ministry, Shmuel Slavin, said the reasons for the high prices are clear: over-centralization and concentration in a handful of companies, excess regulation and trade barriers. What needs to be done, he said, is to take action that address the problem. Barkat, a multi-millionaire and the wealthiest member of the Netanyahu government backed a measure in March that would have made it easier for supermarkets and other retailers to raise prices with impunity: repealing the consumer protection law requiring that price tags be attached to products. Barkat convened meetings with the heads of large marketing chains, heads of fashion stores and with representatives of the Chamber of Commerce who advocated rolling back the measure that requires them to affix a price tag on every single product. Some critics believe that a reason for the continual price hikes is the fact that the government's attention is directed elsewhere, with the passage of the judicial overhaul as the declared top priority of the Netanyahu government, which is encouraging the companies that enjoy monopolies to raise prices.
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