The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for May 2017 increased by 0.3 percent, in the proximity of the Index’s rate of growth in the recent period. The Composite Index was positively impacted this month by an increase in most of its components, particularly the import of manufacturing inputs in May, as well as by increases in the Industrial Production Index and the indices of revenue in trade and services for April. In contrast, the Index was negatively impacted by a decline in consumer goods imports.
There were no changes in Composite Index figures for recent months, other than a slight upward revision in the April index deriving from an upward revision in some of its components, particularly goods exports and consumer goods imports. (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 |
|
0.28 |
|
April |
0.31 |
0.38 |
|
March |
0.38 |
0.40 |
|
February |
0.24 |
0.28 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)1
|
|
May 2017 |
April 2017 |
March 2017 |
February 2017 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
2.0 |
4.0 |
-3.6 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
1.1 |
0.9 |
-1.0 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
1.3 |
2.2 |
0.0 |
|
Imports of consumer goods2 |
-1.6 |
2.9 |
4.9 |
6.1 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)2 |
1.0 |
5.0 |
-1.8 |
0.8 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 2 |
0.6 |
-4.8 |
12.2 |
-9.2 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation) 2 |
|
|
1.9 |
-0.8 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
-0.1 |
-0.1 |
|
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector3 |
3.8 |
3.8 |
3.8 |
3.7 |
1 As the Central Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing monthly data on building starts, beginning in July 2016 the method of calculating the building starts component in the Index was changed. The component is calculated quarterly and the change (in percent, seasonally adjusted) is attributed to the last month of the quarter for which it is published. The last figure published is for the first quarter of 2017 (and therefore is attributed to March) and it indicated a decline of 18.3 percent.
2 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to Central Bureau of Statistics 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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http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx