The International Monetary Fund logo. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Israeli economy will grow by 3.5 percent in 2015, up from 3.2 percent in 2014 and 3.4 percent in 2013, the International Monetary Fund said in its World Economic Outlook mid-year report.

The IMF’s outlook is more optimistic than that of the Bank of Israel, which is predicting growth of 3 percent in 2015, or 2.8 percent without production from the Tamar natural gas reserve.

But the IMF is pessimistic about the rate of unemployment in Israel, predicting that the unemployment rate will rise from 6.2 percent in 2013 to 6.7 percent this year, and then fall to 6.5 percent in 2015. The Bank of Israel, on the other hand, predicts that the unemployment rate will rise more moderately, to 6.2 percent in 2015.