Itongadol.- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yair Lapid announced Sunday that Dr. Karnit Flug has been chosen as the Bank of Israel\’s next governor. Flug will be Israel\’s first female governor of the bank.
The previous governor Stanley Fischer recommended Flug for the position. She has been acting governor in his absence, as his replacement. Netanyahu, however, proposed former governor Jacob Frenkel for the job, but Frenkel had to drop out of the running when it was disclosed that he was detained in Hong Kong airport several years ago on allegations of shoplifting.
In the meantime, as the government searched for a new candidate, Flug, who was Fischer\’s deputy, had been running the central bank since July 1.
The appointment brings an end to the embarrassing saga of months of efforts to find a replacement for Fischer, who in late January announced his resignation, effective six months later, at the end of June. The new governor will be formally installed as head of the central bank by President Shimon Peres.
Flug was born in Poland in 1955. She immigrated to Israel with her parents when she was three. She received her master\’s degree in economics in 1980 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and earned her doctorate in economics at Columbia University in 1985. A year before receiving her PhD she began working as an economist at the International Monetary Fund. In 1988, she returned to Israel and joined the Research Department of the Bank of Israel. While on leave from the central bank in the mid-90s she was employed as a senior research economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.
In 1997, she returned to the Bank of Israel as assistant director of the bank\’s research department. In 2001 she was appointed the department\’s director and became a member of the bank\’s senior management. She was appointed deputy governor in 2011.