Gaza _ Palestine News Network
According to Ali Hayek, chairman of the Palestinian Businessmen Association in the Gaza Strip, only 10 percent of private sector facilities are still operating in their natural form because of the continued division and siege of Israel.
In a press release on Sunday, Hayek said that the private sector in Gaza is no longer capable of further economic crises in the current situation, and is in urgent need to re-support and operate the wholly and partially stalled industrial and commercial enterprises, which would contribute to alleviating the numbers of the unemployed and the poor, In particular, the private sector is the largest employer in Gaza, with more than 80 percent of the labour force.
He stressed that the current efforts to support the existing economic facilities and operational projects, the activation of international development programs and the re-infusion of funds, be the most effective with the presence of 380 thousand unemployed and 220,000 Palestinian graduates without jobs.
Hayek stressed the need to address the imbalance in the turnover of capital resulting from the lack of liquidity, which has led to the damage of hundreds of companies and businessmen, pushing them to reduce expenses, dispense workers, and reduce the wages of some of them.
Hayek called for urgent intervention in order to save the economic conditions in Gaza and for the local and international parties to take swift steps to provide more humanitarian and economic facilities that would alleviate the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has caused great destruction in the economy , and an unprecedented exacerbation of the crises of unemployment, poverty and food insecurity.
Today, Israel reopened the Gaza Strip crossings amid mounting warnings that the humanitarian crisis of its population was worsening as the 11-year-old Israeli blockade had been imposed.
