The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for March 2018 increased by 0.3 percent, similar to its rate of growth in previous months and to its average rate of increase in 2017. The Index was positively impacted by increases in retail trade revenue and in services revenue in February. In contrast, the declines in goods exports and in imports of manufacturing inputs in March, as well as a decrease in Industrial Production in February, moderated the Index’s rate of growth. This month, there was essentially no update in the Index’s readings for previous 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 |
|
March 2018 |
|
0.28 |
|
February 2018 |
0.36 |
0.33 |
|
January 2018 |
0.23 |
0.21 |
|
December 2017 |
0.26 |
0.24 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
March 2018 |
February 2018 |
January 2018 |
December 2017 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
-3.4 |
4.4 |
-0.1 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
2.9 |
-0.6 |
-1.1 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
1.2 |
-0.7 |
0.5 |
|
Imports of consumer goods1 |
-1.5 |
16.6 |
-6.9 |
1.8 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
-8.7 |
21.3 |
-10.9 |
3.3 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1 |
-2.0 |
-1.3 |
5.9 |
-1.8 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1 |
|
|
8.6 |
-4.4 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
-0.4 |
0.0 |
|
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2 |
3.8 |
3.8 |
3.8 |
3.8 |
|
Building starts3 |
|
|
|
-14.5 |
1 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices). Starting on January 14, 2018, import data produced by the CBS are based on a new system, therefore, the decline that appears in the table for January may not reflect economic factors, but rather technical recording factors. The Composite Index model contains a component that deals with outlier observations.
2 The job vacancy rate is included in the Index at its level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
3 As the Central Bureau of Statistics ceased publishing monthly data on building starts, since July 2016 the calculation of the building starts component in the Composite Index has changed. The Component is calculated at a quarterly frequency and the change (in percent, seasonally adjusted) is attributed to the last month of the quarter for which it is published.
For additional data and explanations please click here.
http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx