Director General of the Space Agency Avi Blasberger: "If the promised budget is made available to us, we will reach an industrial scale of NIS 3 billion within 5 years and double within another 5 years"

The CEO of the Israel Space Agency said these things in the first discussion of the subcommittee on space matters of the Science and Technology Committee - the 'Committee on Space Issues' held a first discussion that dealt with the activities of the Israel Space Agency, difficulties and ways to advance it.

At the beginning of the discussion, the chairman of the subcommittee, MK Yoav Kish (Likud), commented on the convention: "In the Knesset, we come across a great many areas in which Israeli industry has a part and success." The space field is a particularly challenging field, on the one hand it has a lot of opportunities and it is very tempting to enter and be active in it, and on the other hand it is the game of the greats. In terms of investments and capabilities, it's hard to find startups, it's hard to find a rocket that gets you going, it's hard to find a lot of capital investments. So it is necessary to combine the capabilities and entrepreneurship we have together with the big companies that will enable the realization of the technology".
The chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, MK Uri Makalev (Torah Judaism) also commented on the meeting of the committee and said: "We appointed Yoav Kish because of his knowledge of the field. We are doing this for the State of Israel and society in Israel, the contribution of space exploration is a very, very important strategic issue. This is a powerful technological lever. This is a subject that is active in every field, transportation, communication, agriculture, interior, the benefit and the need are very great. Today we will be impressed by the activity and the main thing is to hear about the difficulties, and how it is possible to leverage and promote the activity, in investments and research, in order to achieve results."
Later, Professor (Retd. Colonel) Itzik Ben Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency, presented the agency's difficulties: "Until 3-4 years ago, the agency had no budget other than a budget to maintain itself. This changed when the initial goal was to lean on the space infrastructure created by the defense system and leverage it for the benefit of the economy. We started with the 'President's Team' program promoted by former President Peres and the Prime Minister with a rather ambitious goal - that if 300 million NIS are invested every year in the civil space in Israel, it would be possible to take between 3 and 5 percent of the global market, where each percent is approximately 2 billion dollars ".
Ben Yisrael added: "Finally we received 90 million and not 300, and that too was spread over 3 years. The last few years have been problematic in terms of elections, and we discovered that if it's not at the base of the budget, you're in trouble, it was delayed due to all these things, and we can say that the program actually started only a year and a half - two years ago, and we're very far from the budget that was initially defined," added Ben Israel and concluded: "Our main message is that we need to renew this plan, the Space Committee has updated this plan, and the current Minister of Science intends to bring it up in one of the upcoming government debates."
Later in the discussion, the CEO of the Israel Space Agency, Avi Blasberger presented to the members of the committee a long overview of the Israel Space Agency. The review presented the agency's clients, the industry and academic bodies with which it works, as well as the achievements of space in Israel.

On the other hand, Blasberger presented the many difficulties: "The local consumers are not a sufficient source of supply, we have no orders from abroad except for what goes from country to country, the civil sector in Israel is very little and there are no communication projects except for Amos 6".
Belsberger stated that the agency wishes to continue the process that it began in recent years as part of a new plan formulated: the 'Civil National Space Program', in which the government is asked to adopt a number of goals in the fields of building industry, education and positioning Israel as a leading supplier and expert, with the aim of "reaching an industry scope of 3 billion NIS within 5 years and double it within 5 more years. All this on the assumption that the budget will be about NIS 300 million per year as was discussed at the beginning of the road."
Against this, Belsberger presented that the budget approved by the Treasury is about NIS 60 million for the years 2016, 2017, which is a decrease from the previous years' budget and does not come close to the budget relevant to the plan for significant development of the field in Israel.
Shlomo Pashkosh, a representative of the budget division at the Ministry of Finance, responded to the allegations and said: "Already in the first years, a respectable amount of money of NIS 190 million was put here, and this is not obvious for a project that has just started, this is also based on our understanding that there is a lot of potential in the field of civil space. Regarding the following years, there was no cut, there was an agreement within the framework."
"You already have a guaranteed budget for 2017, because it is industrial development we have given a long-term commitment. We have another month of budget discussions, we will happily discuss this in an open discussion as well, the state said it is a strategic goal, it is a vision and we have proven that we understand it" concluded the finance representative.