The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index increased by 0.3 percent in May 2015, similar to its rate of growth in recent months. The Composite Index for May was positively influenced by increases in the import of consumption goods and the renewed increase in the job vacancy rate for May, as well as the increase in the services revenue index for April. The growth rate was moderated this month by a decline in the import of manufacturing inputs in May and the decline in the industrial production induce for April. There were no major revisions in the Index’s rate of increase 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 |
May |
0.29 | |
April |
0.23 |
0.22 |
March |
0.40 |
0.37 |
February |
0.33 |
0.33 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
May 2015 |
April 2015 |
March
2015 |
February
2015 | |
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
-4.1 |
2.6 |
2.4 | |
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration) |
1.9 |
-1.9 |
0.9 | |
Trade Revenue Index |
-0.9 |
1.6 |
-2.1 | |
Imports of consumer goods3 |
1.4 |
-6.2 |
10.7 |
-4.1 |
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3 |
-4.4 |
-2.6 |
2.5 |
-5.4 |
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3 |
-0.4 |
-4.4 |
-2.9 |
0.9 |
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
-2.1 |
-0.3 |
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
0.3 |
-0.2 | ||
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1 |
3.08 |
2.80 |
3.03 |
3.33 |
Building starts2 |
-1.0 |
4.9 |
1 The rate of job vacancies at its actual level, seasonally adjusted.
2 Six-month moving average.
3 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
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