The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for February 2016 increased by 0.25 percent, similar to its rate of increase in recent months, an indication of the economy’s stable rate of growth. The Composite Index was positively impacted this month primarily by an increase in trade revenue and services revenue indices in January, and by increases in imports of manufacturing inputs and in the job vacancy rate in February. The decline in industrial production in January and the decline in goods exports in February moderated the Index’s rate of growth.  

 
This month there were essentially no changes in the growth rate of the Index in 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
February 2016
 
0.25
January
0.19
0.20
December
0.27
0.27
November
0.38
0.39
  
 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
-3.7
-1.2
8.0
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
0.6
0.6
0.6
Trade Revenue Index
 
1.8
-2.6
2.5
Imports of consumer goods3
-0.5
-1.6
5.2
-3.5
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
14.7
-8.9
6.4
-4.4
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
-3.3
1.7
-3.8
5.6
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
0.4
-0.5
0.1
-2.8
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 sector1
3.60
3.37
3.74
3.40
Building starts2
 
 
-1.2
-1.0
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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