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The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for August increased by 0.2 percent. The rate of increase in the Index in recent months reflects, among other things, the acceleration in the rate of increase of business sector product in the second quarter[1], which was apparently due to the start of natural gas production. Other than that, the increase in the Index reflects moderate but stable growth. The increase in the Index also reflects increases in the industrial production index and in goods exports, as well as a slight increase in the Trade Revenue and Services Revenue Indices. These increases were moderated by declines in consumer goods imports, manufacturing inputs, services exports, and the job vacancy rate. This month there were no major revisions to Index data from previous months. 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 |
August |
0.17 | |
July |
0.20 |
0.19 |
June |
0.20 |
0.21 |
May |
0.20 |
0.21 |
April |
0.25 |
0.26 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(Monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
August |
July |
June |
May | |
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
1.46 |
0.00 |
-1.28 | |
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration) |
0.21 |
-4.38 |
2.57 | |
Trade Revenue Index |
0.75 |
-1.03 |
-1.45 | |
Imports of consumer products3 |
-2.29 |
-0.58 |
6.68 |
-2.17 |
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3 |
-6.57 |
-0.32 |
3.70 |
-0.19 |
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3 |
1.35 |
-6.85 |
-4.11 |
-4.99 |
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3 |
-6.43 |
-3.30 |
2.27 |
1.03 |
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
0.11 |
-0.09 | ||
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1 |
2.67 |
2.72 |
2.79 | |
Building starts2 |
-2.47 |
-1.47 |
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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[1] Quarterly business sector product growth data, which are not available when the monthly Composite Index is published, are included with a lag, such that the rate of the Index’s growth expresses the monthly rate of business product growth over time.