Key View

• As the digital revolution gains momentum in the Middle East, Israel is positioning itself as a key player in the cloud services and data center markets.
• The market’s evolving landscape is underpinned by significant investments from major global cloud service providers and promising developments in data centre infrastructure.
• In

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions, we forecast that Israel’s current account surplus will widen from 4.0% of GDP n 2022 to 4.5% in 2023, as stubbornly elevated inflation and tighter monetary policy weigh on import growth.
• This is a slightly wider surplus than previously forecasted, as we now expect lower imports due to weaker domestic demand and

Key View

• Global security tensions are set to increase, following Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty on reducing nuclear weapons.
• In Nigeria, we continue to expect Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling party to win the presidency, but regardless of who wins, the next president is unlikely to be able to pass significant

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions, we expect that the Bank of Israel will increase its policy rate by a cumulative 75 basis points in 2023, with a terminal policy rate of 4.00%.
• A more hawkish US Federal Reserve and stubbornly elevated inflation will see the Bank of Israel hike by another 25 basis points in the next meeting in February, though an

Key View: We hold a positive outlook for fish and seafood spending in Israel over the medium term (2022-2026). This will be driven by rising incomes and demand for healthier and more premium protein sources, supported by the wider healthification drive underway in Israel. Despite its location on the Mediterranean, Israel imports a large amount of

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions anticipate that the BoI will hike its policy rate from 2.00% currently to 3.10% by the end of the year.
• Higher-than-expected inflation and a robust growth environment will provide impetus for policymakers to hike more aggressively than we had previously anticipated in coming months.
• We believe the BoI’s hiking

Key View: Israel boasts a strong coffee culture and a vast selection of coffee-based beverage is on offers for its domestic consumers. Trade data indicates a shift in consumer preferences towards roasted coffee and coffee blends, over raw beans and single-origin coffee. We believe innovations, such as subscription coffee offerings can open up

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions we now expect that the Bank of Israel (BoI) will hike by an additional 75 basis points (bps) in the coming months, ending the year at 1.50%, an upward revision from our previous forecast of 1.00%.
• Our revision assumes that inflation, driven by a combination of cost-push and demand-pull factors, will now trend above

Key View

• At Fitch Solutions, we forecast that Israel’s current account surplus will narrow from 4.7% of GDP in 2021 to 4.1% of GDP in 2022.
• We expect that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will result in elevated global commodity prices and slower growth in many of Israel’s key export markets.
• That said, growth in business and tech services, as