The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index increased by 0.4 percent in March 2015, a slightly higher pace than the average growth rate in the past year. The Index for March was positively impacted on by an increase in imports of consumer goods and of manufacturing inputs for March, as well as an increase in the industrial production index for February. Declines in goods exports in March and in the trade revenue index for February were the main components moderating the Index’s rate of increase. The Index’s rate of increase for February was revised upward due to an update by the Central Bureau of Statistics in goods exports for that month (Table 1).  Table 2 presents the development of components of the Index in the past few months.[1]

 
Table 1: Revisions in the Composite Index
Revision
Previous data
New data
March
 
0.37
February
0.25
0.33
January
0.30
0.33
December
0.49
0.46
 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
March 2015
February
2015
January
2015
December
2014
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
2.5
-1.6
0.8
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
0.3
-0.5
3.8
Trade Revenue Index
 
-1.8
0.3
0.5
Imports of consumer goods3
12.9
-4.2
-17.0
15.1
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
5.6
-5.6
-1.2
10.6
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
-4.6
0.2
4.6
16.3
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
1.2
-0.9
4.7
-6.0
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
-0.6
0.1
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
 
3.19
2.99
3.09
Building starts2
 
 
-4.8
2.1
1 The rate of job vacancies at its actual level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
2 Six-month moving average.
3 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
 
For additional data and explanations please click here.

[1] The Composite Index for this month was calculated without data on the job vacancy rate for March, due to a delay in the publication of that statistic by the Central Bureau of Statistics.