A project to help enhance employment opportunities in the north of Israel through loans and financial advice to new and existing small businesses that we established two years ago in the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, has given loans with a total value of some $16.5 million at an attractive rate of interest and with a simplified guarantor procedure to 350 businesses and advice, the cost of which we subsidize, to 1,200. Each individual loan can be up to some $87,000.

A survey carried out over this period shows that while 60% of the businesses we helped reported that they were financially stable at the start of the war, by its end, this had gone down to 48%. The program has succeeded in raising this figure to 63%, despite the current difficult economic situation; while in addition, the businesses helped have created 800 new jobs.