The Composite State of the Economy Index for February 2019 increased by 0.3 percent

The Composite State of the Economy Index for February 2019 increased by 0.3 percent: The expansion of activity at a stable pace is continuing

The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for February increased by 0.31 percent, continuing the increase at a similar pace during 2018. The Index was positively impacted by growth in most of its components, particularly increases in goods exports and consumer goods imports in February, and by increases in the Industrial Production index and in indices of retail trade and services revenue in January. The rate of growth was moderated by a decline in the job vacancy rate in February. The Index readings for previous months were revised upward (Table 1), due to the release of the building starts data for December which indicated an increase in their scope. 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 2019		0.31
January 2019	0.28	0.37
December 2018	0.26	0.28
November 2018	0.27	0.28

 

 

 Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months

(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)

	February 2019	January 2019	December 2018	November 2018
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)		5.4	-0.5	-2.7
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration)		2.2	-2.3	1.3
Retail Trade Revenue Index		1.0	0.1	0.6
Imports of consumer goods1	3.4	-1.4	-0.9	5.5
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1	0.7	3.1	-2.2	4.4
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1	11.0	0.4	4.1	-0.6
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1		6.7	-2.6	-1.7
Number of employee posts in the private sector			0.1	0.2
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2	3.5	3.6	3.6	3.6
Building starts3			8.7

¹ 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.

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, quarterly, 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​