The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for March increased by 0.29 percent, similar to its pace of increase in 2018 and for the year to date. The Index was positively impacted by growth in most of its components, particularly increases in goods exports and consumer goods imports in March, and by an increase in the Industrial Production index in February. The Composite Index’s rate of growth was moderated by a decline in imports of manufacturing inputs in March and a decline in the retail sales revenue index in February. There was essentially no revision in index data 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 2019 |
|
0.29 |
|
February 2019 |
0.32 |
0.33 |
|
January 2019 |
0.37 |
0.33 |
|
December 2018 |
0.28 |
0.24 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
March 2019 |
February 2019 |
January 2019 |
December 2018 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
3.2 |
4.9 |
-0.5 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
1.7 |
2.1 |
-2.1 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
-0.8 |
0.6 |
0.2 |
|
Imports of consumer goods1 |
3.6 |
7.0 |
0.3 |
-0.6 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
-3.4 |
0.8 |
3.1 |
-2.5 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1 |
2.1 |
8.4 |
2.7 |
3.3 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1 |
|
|
6.7 |
-2.6 |
|
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 sector2 |
3.5 |
3.5 |
3.6 |
3.6 |
|
Building starts3 |
|
|
|
8.7 |
1 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices). Beginning from January 14, 2018, import data generated by the CBS are based on a new system. Thus, the decline appearing in January may not reflect economic factors but rather technical recording issues. The Composite Index model has 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, quarterly, 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