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The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for May 2014 increased by 0.2 percent, indicating moderate growth similar to the growth rate that has characterized the economy over the past three years, following two months in which growth of the index was more moderate. Components that made particular contributions to the increase of the Index were increases in the imports of consumer goods index and in the imports of manufacturing inputs index, and the increase in goods and services exports. The Industrial Production Index and the Services Revenue Index moderated the growth rate of the Composite Index. There were no major updates to Index data for previous months (Table 1). Table 2 presents the development of components of the Index in the past few months.
Revision |
Previous data |
New data |
May |
0.17 | |
April |
0.04 |
0.07 |
March |
0.00 |
-0.01 |
February |
0.16 |
0.15 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
May |
April |
March |
February | |
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
-0.42 |
-7.19 |
4.57 | |
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration) |
-1.75 |
-1.09 |
-0.44 | |
Trade Revenue Index |
1.54 |
-2.06 |
-0.77 | |
Imports of consumer goods3 |
3.12 |
0.47 |
-1.59 |
0.28 |
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3 |
3.21 |
-3.19 |
2.70 |
-1.99 |
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3 |
0.98 |
-3.60 |
-11.01 |
5.19 |
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3 |
1.89 |
-1.52 |
3.48 |
-3.17 |
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
-0.01 |
0.00 | ||
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1 |
2.71 |
2.69 |
2.69 |
2.60 |
Building starts2 |
-1.01 |
-5.77 |