The Composite State of the Economy Index for April 2018 increases by 0.4 percent

The Composite State of the Economy Index for April 2018 increases by 0.4 percent: Expansion in recent months has been stable at a rate similar to that of 2017

The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for April 2018 increased by 0.4 percent, slightly faster than its rate of growth in the beginning of the year. The Index was positively impacted by increases in imports of manufacturing inputs in April and by the March increases in the Industrial Production index and the retail trade revenue and services revenue indices. In contrast, the slight decline in goods exports and the slight decline in consumer goods imports moderated the Index’s rate of growth. This month, there was essentially no revision to the Index’s readings 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 2018		0.39
March 2018	0.28	0.33
February 2018	0.33	0.36
January 2018	0.21	0.22

 

 

Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months

(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)

	April 2018	March 2018	February 2018	January 2018
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)		0.2	-4.4	6.8
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration)		1.7	0.6	0.3
Retail Trade Revenue Index		1.3	0.7	0.2
Imports of consumer goods1	-1.5	-3.6	18.0	-7.1
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1	2.1	-8.4	21.4	-11.0
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1	-1.0	-2.6	-0.7	5.8
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1			8.1	6.2
Number of employee posts in the private sector			0.0	-0.4
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2	3.8	3.8	3.8	3.8
Building starts3

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¹ Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices). Starting on January 14, 2018, import data produced by the CBS are based on a new system, therefore, the decline that appears in the table for January may not reflect economic factors, but rather technical recording factors.  The Composite Index model contains a component that deals with outlier observations.

² The job vacancy rate is included in the Index at its level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.

³ As the Central Bureau of Statistics ceased publishing monthly data on building starts, since July 2016 the calculation of the building starts component in the Composite Index has changed. The Component is calculated at a quarterly frequency and the change (in percent, seasonally adjusted) is attributed to the last month of the quarter for which it is published.

 

For additional data and explanations please click here.

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

 

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