The Shekel Gained 20%. Your Italian Pasta Never Heard About It

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-12 · 4 min read

80% — The gap between the cheapest and most expensive shelf price in Israel for the identical 500g box of Barilla — ₪6.60 vs ₪11.90, four times the shekel's gain against the dollar (Superclear data, July 2026)

On 17 June 2026 the Knesset's Economic Affairs Committee met to settle a question that sounds simple: the shekel has strengthened dramatically, so why hasn't supermarket food gotten cheaper? Ami Tzadik, head of budgetary oversight at the Knesset Research and Information Center, gave the answer that became the headline — prices in Israel "rise like missiles and fall like feathers" (N12).

It's a good line. But we're a price site, not a quote site — so we went to check what is actually happening on the shelf, to the products that should have benefited most from a strong shekel.

What actually happened to the currency

The figures presented to the committee leave little room for argument. Between January 2025 and May 2026 the shekel strengthened 19.8% against the dollar and 9.4% against the euro. By mid-June the dollar was trading around ₪2.91 — its lowest level since October 1993 — and the euro fell to a historic low of roughly ₪3.33 (Walla). The move was sharp enough that the Finance Ministry convened an urgent discussion on how to respond; among the steps weighed, per N12, was pressuring importers to cut consumer prices.

Global commodity prices fell in parallel. Per N12, world sugar prices dropped about 19% over the year and rice about 33%; at the committee hearing, Lobby 99's Boaz Akerman said global coffee prices had fallen about 22% (N12). Anyone buying in dollars or euros and converting to shekels should, in theory, have enjoyed a double discount: cheaper goods, bought with a stronger currency.

In practice, the April 2026 CPI rose 1.2% in a single month, and food was — in Walla's phrase — the month's "negative star." According to figures presented to the committee, between August 2025 and April 2026 food prices in the European Union fell 1.1% — while in Israel they rose 0.2%.

What happened at the importers

The most interesting check wasn't run on the index but on real baskets. N12 examined the product prices of three large food importers and got the opposite of the expected result: Willi Food's basket rose 5.7%, Leiman Schlissel's by almost 7%, and Shestowitz's by 4% — in a period when the shekel was strengthening. Chen Herzog, chief economist at BDO, told N12 that "there's some kind of anomaly here."

And the last link in the chain? Per Maariv, Q1 2026 reports showed food chains and food producers posting revenue growth alongside a jump in profit — that is, improved profitability, not merely higher volumes.

Now, the actual prices

This is where our own data comes in. We picked three products where the currency argument should bite hardest — international brands whose inputs (durum wheat, coffee beans, tuna) are bought abroad in foreign currency, and whose exact same barcode is sold nationwide. Here is what sits in Superclear's database (scan of 12 July 2026):

Barilla pasta, 500g — an Italian brand, sold in 862 stores across 25 chains. Median price in Israel: ₪8.50. Cheapest we found: ₪6.60. Most expensive: ₪11.90. Gap between the extremes: 80%.

StarKist tuna fillet — 745 stores across 28 chains. Median ₪16.90, range ₪12.60 to ₪21.90 — a 74% gap.

Taster's Choice instant coffee, 100g — 424 stores across 17 chains. Median ₪31.90, range ₪19.90 to ₪38.90 — a 95% gap.

Sit with that number for a second. The shekel gained 19.8% against the dollar — a macroeconomic shock large enough to trigger emergency meetings at the Treasury. But on that very same box of pasta — same brand, same weight, same barcode — the gap between Israel's cheapest shelf and its priciest is four times that entire currency move.

At the chain level the picture is consistent: the median price of that Barilla box is ₪7.90 at Rami Levy, Shufersal, Yochananof and Tiv Taam — and ₪9.90 at Yenot Bitan, Freshmarket, AM:PM and City Market, and ₪10.90 at Super Yuda. The tuna: ₪14.80 at Rami Levy versus ₪19.90 at AM:PM. The coffee: ₪24.90 at Rami Levy versus ₪35.90 at Freshmarket.

What this means for you

Two conclusions, and they don't contradict each other.

First: the public argument over who swallowed the shekel's discount — the importer, the manufacturer or the chain — is a real and important one, and our data cannot settle it. What we can see is that the discount, at least on these three products, did not reach the shelf evenly.

Second, and this is the practical one: the gap you control is bigger than the gap they're arguing about in the Knesset. Moving from the priciest chain to the cheapest on these three products saves between 25% and 31% off the shelf price, measured on each chain's median. That is not a blanket average across a whole basket, and it varies from product to product — but it is money sitting there today, with no need to wait for a committee, a regulator, or anyone's goodwill.

Zoom out and our index says the same thing: the gap between chains is not noise. Osher Ad sits about 19% below the national median; Yellow about 32% above it. The dollar may keep falling. The chain you walk into is still the variable with the biggest effect on your receipt.

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