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The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for April 2014 was unchanged, the second consecutive month that the rate has been lower than the growth rate in previous months. Most components of the Index declined this month, with notable declines in the goods exports index, the imports of manufacturing inputs index, and the industrial production index. In contrast, there were moderate increases in the job vacancy rate. Index data for previous months were revised slightly downward following revisions downward by the Central Bureau of Statistics in the trade revenue index and the industrial production index, and due to a downward revision in services exports data (Table 1). Table 2 presents the development of components of the Index in the past few months.
Table 1: Revisions in the Composite Index
Revision |
Previous data |
New data |
April |
0.04 | |
March |
0.13 |
0.00 |
February |
0.23 |
0.16 |
January\ |
0.28 |
0.23 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
April |
March |
February |
January | |
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
-4.98 |
2.66 |
-1.07 | |
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration) |
0.22 |
-0.25 |
4.02 | |
Trade Revenue Index |
-2.13 |
-0.78 |
1.84 | |
Imports of consumer goods3 |
0.07 |
-1.75 |
0.23 |
2.08 |
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3 |
-3.47 |
2.56 |
-2.04 |
3.22 |
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3 |
-10.98 |
-13.39 |
6.26 |
6.92 |
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3 |
-1.89 |
3.48 |
-3.17 |
5.83 |
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
0.04 |
-0.34 | ||
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1 |
2.67 |
2.69 |
2.60 |
2.61 |
Building starts2 |
-6.88 |
-2.41 |
1 The rate of job vacancies at its actual level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
2 Six-month moving average.
3 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
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