The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for August 2018 increased by 0.4 percent. The average growth rate of the Index slowed slightly in the second quarter but currently is again similar to the pace of recent years. The Index for August was positively impacted by all its component indices of economic activity, particularly by an increase in consumer goods imports in August and an increase in industrial production in July. The increase in building starts in the second quarter, after a prolonged decline, also contributed to the Index’s rate of growth. There was essentially no change in 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 |
|
August 2018 |
|
0.36 |
|
July 2018 |
0.36 |
0.36 |
|
June 2018 |
0.32 |
0.31 |
|
May 2018 |
0.26 |
0.25 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
August 2018 |
July 2018 |
June 2018 |
May 2018 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
2.4 |
0.2 |
-2.8 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
0.7 |
-2.5 |
2.2 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
0.1 |
-0.6 |
2.1 |
|
Imports of consumer goods1 |
2.5 |
2.2 |
0.0 |
1.3 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
0.3 |
2.7 |
-2.8 |
2.8 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1 |
0.4 |
-4.4 |
11.3 |
-9.0 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1 |
|
|
-2.8 |
0.1 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
0.0 |
-0.1 |
|
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 |
|
|
4.2 |
|
1 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
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