The "Israel Basket": The State Paid Carrefour ₪50 Million. We Checked What You Got

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-13 · 5 min read

10th of 33 — Carrefour's place on Superclear's priciness index — ranked most-expensive-first — as of July 2026, in the middle of the state-funded ₪50 million "Israel Basket" campaign

It sounds like a simple deal: the state funds a retail chain's ₪50 million advertising campaign out of public money, and in exchange the chain commits to selling a basket of 100 staple products at a dramatically reduced price. Almost three months after the "Israel Basket" launched at Carrefour, the accounting can begin — and both an academic study and the price data we collect every day paint a far more complicated picture than the campaign slogans.

The deal: a sole bidder, one basket, ₪50 million

In February 2026, the Economy Ministry under Minister Nir Barkat announced the winner of the "Israel Basket" tender: Carrefour, which was also the only bidder. The chain committed to selling a basket of 100 leading products for ₪1,098 — a price that, per Calcalist, came in 21.8% below the ministry's reference price and 30.3% below the average at the discount chains. In return: a government advertising budget of ₪50 million a year.

The discount chains themselves stayed out. Rami Levy explained his refusal by arguing that real competition is measured over time and across all products, not on a limited theoretical basket — and promised that a chain taking no state money would stay cheaper than the ministry's basket price (Calcalist).

The launch: 107 products, 53 branches, and plenty of asterisks

After a delay of about a month due to the war with Iran, the basket went live on April 15: 107 discounted products, but in only about 53 branches — out of roughly 150 Carrefour locations (TheMarker). On the list: a liter of canola oil at ₪9.90, Telma mayonnaise 500g at ₪8.50, Tnuva cottage cheese at ₪5.40, a kilo of sugar at ₪2.90 (N12/Mako).

The asterisks arrived quickly. Calcalist raised the question of whether Carrefour was even meeting the tender's terms, which required applying the discount across the entire chain or at least one complete store format: in practice the discount covered only part of the branches in each format. Products went missing — Starkist tuna was absent from 28 branches, an infant formula was dropped from the basket, and the online store carried only 82 of the 100 products, against a tender requirement of 85% availability (Carrefour responded that it was working to restore the missing items). A sharper commentary on N12/Mako also pointed to the two-units-per-customer cap on every discounted product, and to the fact that at Carrefour's urban City branches — mostly outside the arrangement — the very same products sold for tens of percent more.

The consumer organizations Emun HaTzibur ("Public Trust") and Hatzlacha petitioned the High Court of Justice to freeze the project, arguing among other things that the publicly funded campaign presents a partial picture and that there was a risk of "cross-subsidization" — raising prices on products outside the basket. The court rejected the petition in May, and the project rolled on (Walla).

The study: the basket got cheaper — the shelves around it got pricier

At the end of June, researchers from Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Itai Ater with co-researchers from Tel Aviv University and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, published the first systematic examination of the program — based on the daily price files that chains are legally required to publish, covering some 70 sub-chains and more than 2,000 stores (N12).

The good news: the discount is real. Basket product prices fell by about 35% at participating Carrefour branches, versus only about 6% at Carrefour branches outside the arrangement. The less good news: per Calcalist, out of 76 product categories examined, 46 showed price increases at participating branches — 23 of them statistically significant. Lotus biscuits rose 13.5% to ₪14.1, Persil 2.5-liter laundry gel rose 17.8% to ₪36.3, and Head & Shoulders shampoo rose 14.1% to ₪18.1. Online the increases were even broader — 55 of 76 categories.

And the competition effect, the whole justification for the exercise, stayed modest: competitors cut their basket prices by only 3% to 10%. Carrefour responded that it has no control over competitors' pricing; the Economy Ministry criticized the methodology, noted the study covered only the first two months, and said more than 800,000 Israelis are already saving hundreds of shekels per shop (N12).

What our own data shows today

At Superclear we scan the price files of every chain, every day — the same files the researchers used. As of July 13, 2026, almost three months after launch, Carrefour (which still reports in the transparency files under its old name, Yenot Bitan) sits 10th out of 33 chains on our priciness index — where 1st is the most expensive — with prices about 2% above the national median. Above it are mostly convenience, pharma and small urban chains; Rami Levy and Yochananof sit about 14% below the median, and Osher Ad — the cheapest chain in Israel — about 19% below. A ₪50 million campaign is, as of today, advertising a chain whose overall prices are still above the national median.

Our data also shows how much it matters which Carrefour you walk into: the chain's internal price spread — between its cheapest and priciest branch on the same products — runs about 21%, the seventh widest in Israel. Take Telma mayonnaise 500g, a basket product listed in April at ₪8.50: in the price files Carrefour published today, the cheapest jar anywhere in the chain costs ₪9.30, and the priciest ₪14.50 — a 56% gap inside a single chain. At Rami Levy, which refused the tender, it sells from ₪8.50. With Tnuva 5% cottage cheese, a basket product listed at ₪5.40, the picture is actually more flattering: Carrefour's cheapest branches sell it at ₪5.00 — among the lowest in Israel — but at other branches of the same chain it runs up to ₪6.30.

The bottom line

The "Israel Basket" is not a bluff: if you live near a participating branch, buy mostly from the list of 100, and never need more than two units of anything, you save real money. But the Tel Aviv University study, the reporting of recent months, and the data we collect ourselves tell the rest of the story: products outside the basket that got pricier, a discount covering only part of the branches, and a chain that is, overall, still more expensive than the national median — with wide gaps between its own stores.

The takeaway for shoppers is the one we keep coming back to: don't buy the campaign — check the price. Even when the advertiser is the state.

Sources