The Israeli cabinet on Sunday unanimously approved several measures recommended by a committee to battle sharp price hikes by food manufacturers and importers.

The committee's recommendations revealed flaws in the Israeli food supply chain, from growers to store shelves, and outlined steps the government could implement to battle rising costs hitting consumers at the checkout lane.

"We discovered that the flaws in the Israeli food market have led to unjustified hikes in prices in the last years," said committee chief Sharon Kedmi, the director-general of the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry.

"We've offered several steps to better the situation, starting from encouraging competition within the manufacturing and importing fields, as well as revising trade relations between suppliers and marketing chains, leading up to the consumer," he said.

"Implementing these recommendations ... will increase the competition along the value chain in the food market while keeping the necessary balances required for the existence of a free market, " Kedmi added.

The committee's results include limiting the expansion of major food chains, as only few players control the market and are suspected of coordinating prices.

It also calls for tougher regulation on the conduct between suppliers and marketing chains, and demands finance minister strengthen the pricing transparency in favor of shoppers.

The committee was assembled in order to appease growing public dissatisfaction with skyrocketing rising living costs, among them foodstuffs, a dissatisfaction which resulted in boycotts against several Israeli food conglomerates.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the committee and called for a quick implementation of its recommendations.

"This is major news vis-a-vis lowering the cost of living," Netanyahu told ministers at the cabinet session.

"After food prices climbed between 2006 and 2008, we are bringing in competition on a major scale and with daring measures. We will increase competition and reduce the power of cartels and monopolies in order to leave consumers with more money in their pockets," Netanyahu added.

However, left-of-center Labor party leader Shelly Yachimovich criticized the government for eliminating a number of the report's chief recommendations.

"The government chose to ignore the central recommendations the committee handed in, in its intermediary report several months ago, and only authorize the remnant of these conclusions," said Yachimovich, who is touting improving a raft of socio-economic issues as the faction's central election plank.

"The recommendations as they are now are worthless and even if implemented will not change anything," she said.

She contended that "completely neglected" in the final recommendations of a comptroller's report released last week were what she said was non-existent price supervision of basic food items, as well as the centralization of production which she charged suppresses small suppliers.

The Israeli public has seen sharp rises in prices of dairy products, vegetables, bread and eggs, along with tariffs for water, electricity and fuel.

Last summer, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the street in protest of the rising costs of living and demanded a change in the government's priorities towards a more equitable socio-economic agenda.

Improving public welfare and housing is expected to play a central theme in the upcoming premiership and Knesset (parliament) elections, scheduled for Jan. 22, 2013.

Two weeks ago, Netanyahu called for early elections after the government failed to come up with a majority to pass next year's budget, which includes NIS 14 billion (3.68 billion U.S. dollars) in cuts, specifically targeting social affairs and education.