The Composite State of the Economy Index for June 2019 increases by 0.2 percent: Activity returns to expansion at the long-term rate, after a transitory slowdown in May

The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for June increased by 0.23 percent. The Index’s rate of increase reflects growth at the long-term pace, and it appears that the moderation in May reflected fluctuations in data. The Index was positively impacted by increases in consumer goods imports, imports of manufacturing inputs, and goods exports in June. In contrast, slight declines in the industrial production index and in retail trade and services revenue indices for May moderated the Composite Index’s rate of growth. There were essentially no changes in the Index for recent 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
June 2019		0.23
May 2019	0.13	0.14
April 2019	0.23	0.22
March 2019	0.25	0.25

 

 

  

Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months¹

(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)

	June 2019	May 2019	April 2019	March 2019
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)		-0.2	2.2	1.5
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration)		-0.4	1.4	-1.0
Retail Trade Revenue Index		-0.7	1.6	-0.5
Imports of consumer goods2	7.6	-9.7	-5.5	3.6
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)2	2.2	-5.3	4.6	-2.9
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 2	6.8	-5.9	-10.6	-1.4
Services exports (excluding transportation) 2			-0.1	-0.7
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	3.5	3.6	3.6
Building starts1				-15.9

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).

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.

 

 

 

For additional data and explanations please click here.

http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx

 

 

 

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