The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for January increased by 0.28 percent, similar to the average rate of increase during 2018. The Index was positively impacted by the increase in the import of manufacturing inputs. In contrast, the declines in goods exports and the imports of consumer goods in January and the decline in services revenue in December moderated the Index’s rate of growth this month. There were no significant revisions to the index 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 |
|
January 2019 |
|
0.28 |
|
December 2018 |
0.24 |
0.26 |
|
November 2018 |
0.26 |
0.27 |
|
October 2018 |
0.28 |
0.27 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
January 2019 |
December 2018 |
November 2018 |
October 2018 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
-0.3 |
-2.6 |
0.3 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
-3.2 |
1.1 |
0.5 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
-0.1 |
0.6 |
1.2 |
|
Imports of consumer goods1 |
-1.5 |
-1.1 |
4.4 |
0.1 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
3.0 |
-2.9 |
4.1 |
0.7 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1 |
-1.0 |
1.5 |
-3.0 |
0.8 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1 |
|
|
-2.9 |
2.1 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
0.2 |
0.6 |
|
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2 |
3.6 |
3.7 |
3.6 |
3.8 |
|
Building starts3 |
|
|
|
|
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. The most recent figure published shows a decline of 1.6 percent.
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