Economy Minister Nir Barkat is proposing a new law that would require large companies, such as Coca Cola and Osem, to disclose their annual financial statements.
Kan reported that the purpose of the move is to reveal to the public how the products are priced and find out if the producers make exorbitant profits when they raise prices – “as healthy transparency for the Israeli consumer”.
Barkat’s proposal imposes on companies that are monopolies and whose turnover exceeds NIS 300 million, such as Tnuva, Osem, and Coca Cola, and are not public companies, to disclose their annual reports to the public, with the option for the price supervisor at the Ministry of Economy to oblige them to disclose quarterly reports as well.
According to the proposal, a company that does not comply with this will be subject to criminal or financial sanctions.

The proposal will be published in the coming days as a memorandum of law for public comments, and will later go through the Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs as a government bill, as part of the State Comptroller’s recommendation to consider such a law.
Minister Barkat stated: “The profiteering at the public expense of the cartels and monopolies is over, but let’s just remember that there was such a bill in 2017 that fell due to pressure from the industrialists’ association. We’ll see if this time the government will give in to the pressure of the big companies or stand up for itself.”