JERUSALEM, May 17 (Reuters) – Israel’s economy contracted at an annualised rate of 3.3% \u200cin the first three months of \u200c2026, the Central Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday, \u200bas the war against Iran weighed on output.<\/p>\n
The decline was not as severe as a 4% drop forecast in a Reuters poll \u200cof economists.<\/p>\n
The economy \u2060grew 2.9% in 2025 and was expected to bounce back in 2026 \u2060to more than 5% growth after a ceasefire in October ended major fighting in \u200bthe two-year \u200bGaza war.<\/p>\n
But growth \u200btook a hit after \u200cthe start of a U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran began on February 28, resulting in weeks of ballistic missile fire from Iran that closed schools while businesses suffered.<\/p>\n
The Bank of \u200cIsrael currently sees the \u200beconomy growing 3.8% this \u200byear, depending on \u200bwhether a ceasefire forged last \u200cmonth with Iran holds.<\/p>\n
In the \u200bfirst quarter, \u200bconsumer spending fell 4.7%, exports declined 3.7% and government spending shed 4.8%. Investment \u200bin fixed \u200cassets rose 12.6%.<\/p>\n
On a per capita basis, \u200bthe economy shrank 4.5%.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Steven \u200bScheerEditing by Peter Graff)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JERUSALEM, May 17 (Reuters) – Israel’s economy contracted at an annualised rate of 3.3% \u200cin the first three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,103259,113,61,11829,60,3410],"class_list":["post-453548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-central-bureau-of-statistics","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}