The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for April increased by 0.28 percent. The Index’s average rate of growth from the beginning of the year is slightly higher than its average pace for 2018. The Index was positively impacted by increases in imports of manufacturing inputs and in the job vacancy rate in April, and by an increase in the Industrial Production index in March. The Composite Index’s rate of growth was moderated by a decline in consumer goods imports and in goods exports in April, and a decline in the retail trade sales revenue and services revenue indices in March. The Index reading for January was revised upward due to an upward revision in retail trade data for that month (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 2019 |
|
0.28 |
|
March 2019 |
0.29 |
0.27 |
|
February 2019 |
0.33 |
0.35 |
|
January 2019 |
0.33 |
0.45 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months1
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
April 2019 |
March 2019 |
February 2019 |
January 2019 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
1.3 |
0.4 |
2.5 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
-1.2 |
0.5 |
0.9 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
-0.9 |
0.0 |
1.1 |
|
Imports of consumer goods1 |
-5.2 |
4.5 |
3.8 |
0.1 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
4.1 |
-2.7 |
0.9 |
3.4 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1 |
-10.6 |
1.7 |
10.4 |
2.5 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1 |
|
|
3.0 |
8.0 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
-0.2 |
-0.4 |
|
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2 |
3.6 |
3.5 |
3.5 |
3.6 |
1 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. As the most recent data is for December, it does not appear in the table. The most recent figure is for December at 8.7 percent.
2 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices). Beginning from January 14, 2018, import data generated by the CBS are based on a new system. Thus, the decline appearing in January may not reflect economic factors but rather technical recording issues. The Composite Index model has a component that deals with outlier observations.
3 The job vacancy rate is included in the Index at its level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
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