The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for March 2017 increased by 0.4 percent, similar to the average during 2016. The Composite Index was positively affected this month by an increase in the import of consumer goods and in goods exports. In contrast, the increase in the Index was moderated in February by the decline in the Industrial Production Index and in the trade and services revenue indices.
There were no major revisions in the index readings for previous months (Table 1).[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 |
|
March |
|
0.36 |
|
February |
0.31 |
0.26 |
|
January |
0.32 |
0.32 |
|
December |
0.42 |
0.41 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
March 2017 |
February 2017 |
January 2017 |
December 2016 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
-2.3 |
-0.9 |
0.9 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education, and public administration) |
|
-0.5 |
1.7 |
-0.6 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
-0.3 |
-0.6 |
-1.3 |
|
Imports of consumer goods2 |
4.1 |
5.2 |
- 26.7 |
22.4 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)2 |
-2.2 |
0.0 |
3.1 |
-1.1 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 2 |
9.1 |
-9.5 |
-1.8 |
0.1 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 2 |
|
|
2.3 |
-1.0 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
-0.3 |
-0.1 |
|
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector3 |
3.7 |
3.6 |
3.7 |
3.7 |
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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[1] Changes made by the Central Bureau of Statistics in the series on the job vacancy rate, and the resulting revision of the index weights, led to an increase in the weight of the job vacancy rate and an upward revision of the Index during 2016.