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The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for July 2016 increased by 0.2 percent, similar to the previous three months.  The index environment for the past three years was revised upward due to a revision published by the Central Bureau of Statistics for business sector output data and its rate of growth.
 
The growth of business sector output in the second quarter of 2016 and increases in the Industrial Production Index, in the services revenue index for June and in the import of manufacturing inputs in July contributed to the increase in the index. In addition, the Central Bureau of Statistics revised data for previous months upward for industrial production, services revenue, goods exports, services exports, and employee posts in the private sector.  The index was negatively impacted by a decline in the import of consumer goods in June and July.
 
Table 1 provides an overview of the revisions in the Composite Index data for recent months, and 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
July
 
0.17
June
0.10
0.20
May
0.10
0.14
April
0.6
0.14
 
 

 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months1
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
1.9
-0.1
-1.3
 
3.6
Services Revenue Index (excluding education, and public administration)
 
4.2
1.4
-2.4
 
2.8
Retail Trade Revenue Index
 
-0.2
0.8
-3.3
5.3
Imports of consumer goods1
-0.8
-3.3
4.3
0.0
1.7
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1
2.2
-1.4
5.3
-1.3
 
-5.9
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1
-3.5
3.7
-0.5
2.2
-2.5
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1
 
 
-6.1
1.7
3.8
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
-0.1
0.2
 
0.1
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2
3.9
3.5
3.8
3.7
 
 
3.6
Building starts3
 
 
 
 
-4.3
1 The Building Starts component is not shown because it has not been updated since March 2016.
2 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
3 Since the Central Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing monthly figures on building starts, the method of calculation of the building starts component of the Index has been changed starting with the current month.  The component is calculated at a quarterly frequency, and the change (seasonally adjusted in percent) is attributed to the last month of the quarter for which the figure is published.  The other months in the quarter are absent values for which the variable value is estimated in the model.
 
For additional data and explanations please click here.