The Composite State of the Economy Index for April 2017 increased by 0.3 percent

The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for April 2017 increased by 0.3 percent, similar to the Index’s average rate of growth in the recent period. The Composite Index was positively impacted this month by an increase in the import of consumer goods and imports of manufacturing inputs, as well as by the increase in the Industrial Production Index and the indices of trade and services revenue for March. In contrast, the Index was negatively impacted by a decline in goods exports.

 

The Composite Index figures for the end of 2016 and for January 2017 were revised slightly downward, primarily due to a downward revision in growth data for the end of 2016 (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		0.31
March	0.36	0.38
February	0.26	0.24
January	0.32	0.28

 

 

 

Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months

(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted) ¹

	April 2017	March 2017	February 2017	January 2017
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)		2.5	-3.2	-0.7
Services Revenue Index (excluding education, and public administration)		0.6	-1.1	1.8
Retail Trade Revenue Index		1.7	-0.2	-0.5
Imports of consumer goods2	1.6	5.2	5.6	-26.3
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)2	5.0	-1.9	0.8	3.2
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 2	-8.0	11.9	-8.7	-1.7
Services exports (excluding transportation) 2			-0.1	0.2
Number of employee posts in the private sector			-0.1	-0.4
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector3	3.8	3.8	3.7	3.7

¹ As the Central Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing monthly data on building starts, beginning in July 2016 the method of calculating the building starts component in the Index was changed. The component is calculated quarterly and the change (in percent, seasonally adjusted) is attributed to the last month of the quarter for which it is published. The last figure published is for the fourth quarter of 2016 (and therefore is attributed to December) and it indicated a decline of 0.8 percent.

² Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to Central Bureau of Statistics monthly foreign trade indices).

³ The job vacancy rate is included in the Index at its level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.

 

For additional data and explanations please click here.

http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx