attorney general and the committee ’ s legislative counsel. i emphasize that we support the sharing of information, and are already working in joint teams to promote it. however, knesset members, you legislated the credit data law a year ago, and imposed on the bank of israel the task of establishing the credit data register. we are working intensively on that, investing huge quantities of manpower and resources. in the current legislation you are liable, with the snap of your fingers — and without allowing the professional entities even the two months (! ) that we requested to examine the issue — to lead to the credit data register, that will be established at tremendous effort and great expense, being a white elephant. this, of course, without any of us being able to say today if one model is preferable to another, and without adequately considering the various aspects of privacy and information security that the economic affairs committee discussed over many months with regard to the credit data law. the minister of finance and i agreed that the information to be transferred, and how it is used, will not conflict with the credit data law, and it was clear to us that the formulation of the details of the bill ( nature of the information, for what use, manner of transmitting the information, etc. ) that will be established in amendments will be through agreement, because these are the areas of the bank of israel ’ s professional expertise, because it is the entity that is establishing the credit data register, and because the entity that issues guidelines to banks is the banking supervision department at the bank of israel and not the minister of finance with the approval of the governor. here too, the bill contradicts the agreement. 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches the final thing that brought me here today is to refer to the manner in which some of you addressed bank of israel employees during the course of the discussions. bank of israel employees are public servants who come here to present to you their professional position as an input to the legislative process, and to contribute to the laws you are legislating being better and for the benefit of the public. lashing out at them, when they say something you don ’ t want to hear, insulting and hurtful comments, raising voices — although all these did not deter them, ultimately they are liable to deter excellent professional people from arriving here and telling you their professional truth. such a situation certainly will not improve the laws you are legislating, and is beneath the dignity of the knesset and

and we are witness to important initiatives in the area of academic education, mainly among the ultraorthodox sector. the israeli education system ’ s achievements in the international pisa tests are below average. we have recently had better achievements in tims tests, and i hope that they will also be reflected in the other tests. we must improve the achievements of the education system in order to achieve higher economic success. the world bank conducts a survey of the ease of doing business in all countries each year. in 2013, we were in 38th place, a very unsatisfactory placing. we have fallen significantly in this ranking during the past decade, not because our situation has deteriorated, but because the bureaucratic burden in other countries has lessened. the bureaucracy affects not only the ease of doing business, but also the cost of living. for instance, we see its effect on the ability to adjust the supply of housing and on housing prices. the concentration committee made two important recommendations on the matter of breaking apart pyramids and separating financial and real holdings. in this context, i note that if we require the immediate complete separation of financial and real holdings, there would be no people who would be able to be controlling owners of banks, since they would not be able to obtain the required capital through their activities in the real industries. it is possible that in another few decades, we will reach the conclusion that controlling owners are not necessary for banks. but in the meantime, i suggest not to conduct such large experiments on the financial system. i usually don ’ t make comparisons to greece, but this time i will do so : for hundreds of years, we have seen the ramifications that an unstable financial system has on the market. we have a strong banking system, which was of tremendous assistance in our ability to withstand the crisis. we must not endanger its stability, so i suggest not to limit cross - holdings of financial and real entities for now beyond what the concentration committee recommended when it set a benchmark of nis 6 billion for holdings of a real company by someone who holds controlling interest in a financial entity. i understand the logic behind the other suggestions, but i think that we must first of all examine the ramifications of lowering the number of entities that can hold controlling interest before we continue advancing in this field. labor productivity in the israeli economy is 20 percent lower than the oecd average. while we are a wealthy economy, it is a mistake to compare ourselves to the us and