The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index increased by 0.2 percent in April 2015, slightly below its rate of growth in recent months and similar to the average growth rate of the past two years. The Composite Index for April was positively impacted on by increases in the industrial production index and trade revenue index for March, but the growth rate was moderated this month by a decline in goods exports and goods imports in April, and by a decline in the job vacancy rate in the past two months following an extended increase. There were no major revisions in the Index’s rate of increase for previous months (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
 
0.23
March
0.37
0.40
February
0.33
0.33
January
0.33
0.29
 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
April 2015
March
2015
February
2015
January
2015
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
4.7
2.9
-1.3
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
-1.5
0.7
-0.9
Trade Revenue Index
 
1.5
-2.2
0.5
Imports of consumer goods3
-8.0
10.5
-3.2
-17.2
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
-4.3
4.9
-5.2
-1.5
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
-5.0
-5.5
-0.8
1.8
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
0.1
0.5
0.1
5.9
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
-0.2
-0.8
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
2.79
2.99
3.32
2.96
Building starts2
 
 
2.9
-4.0
1 The rate of job vacancies at its actual level, seasonally adjusted.
2 Six-month moving average.
3 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
 
For additional data and explanations please click here.