The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for July increased by 0.19 percent. The Index’s rate of increase since the beginning of the year reflects growth at the long-term pace, while the fluctuation in Composite Index data between the first and second quarters reflects a fluctuation in National Accounts data during that period, which affected the trend of the index. The fluctuation in National Accounts data is due to the change in green taxation rules, which led to vehicle purchases being brought forward to the first quarter at the expense of the second quarter.
The Index for July was positively impacted by increases in goods exports and in the job vacancy rate in July, and by an increase in the retail trade and services revenue indices in June. In contrast, declines in the imports of consumer goods and of manufacturing inputs in July, as well as declines in the industrial production index in June, moderated the Composite Index’s rate of growth. The Index for previous months was revised slightly downward due to the growth data published for the second quarter, which, as mentioned, reflected the fluctuations in vehicle purchases. (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 |
|
July 2019 |
|
0.19 |
|
June 2019 |
0.23 |
0.19 |
|
May 2019 |
0.14 |
0.12 |
|
April 2019 |
0.22 |
0.19 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months1
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
July 2019 |
June 2019 |
May 2019 |
April 2019 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
-0.7 |
-0.9 |
0.6 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
1.0 |
0.1 |
1.4 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
1.7 |
-0.4 |
1.7 |
|
Imports of consumer goods2 |
-3.0 |
7.0 |
-9.3 |
-5.9 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)2 |
-3.8 |
2.1 |
-5.3 |
4.5 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 2 |
0.8 |
10.4 |
-5.6 |
-10.5 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 2 |
|
|
0.4 |
-1.3 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
0.1 |
0.0 |
|
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2 |
3.6 |
3.5 |
3.6 |
3.6 |
|
Building starts1 |
|
|
|
|
1 As the Central Bureau of Statistics publishes building starts data once per quarter, the data integrated into the model are at a monthly frequency based on additional sources, such that the distribution is consistent with the quarterly data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (in percent, seasonally adjusted). The most recent figure published is for January–March, and therefore, no figure appears in this table.
2 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
3 The job vacancy rate is included in the Index at its level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
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http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx