The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for October increased by 0.30 percent. The Index’s rate of increase reflects growth at the long-term pace, with a slight acceleration in the past two months.

 

The Index for October was positively affected by increases in all components, particularly a rapid increase in the import of consumer goods and in consumer goods exports in October, an increase in the job vacancy rate in October following a constant decline over the past year, and increases in industrial production and in the retail trade and services revenue indices in September. There were no significant revisions to the overall Index 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

October

 

0.30

September

0.25

0.29

August

0.20

0.20

July

0.21

0.21

 

 

Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months

(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)

 

October

September

August

July

Industrial Production Index

(excluding mining and quarrying)

 

0.9

-1.8

3.4

Services Revenue Index

(excluding education and public administration)

 

1.1

-1.3

-0.6

Retail Trade Revenue Index

 

5.0

-6.0

0.1

Imports of consumer goods1

9.3

8.9

-3.4

-3.1

Imports of manufacturing inputs

(excluding fuels)

3.6

3.3

2.2

-4.0

Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1

7.2

-9.1

3.0

0.0

Services exports (excluding transportation) 2

 

 

3.2

-2.3

Number of employee posts in the private sector

 

 

0.0

0.0

Job vacancy rate in the business sector3

3.5

3.4

3.5

3.5

Building starts4

 

 

 

 

1 Goods imports and exports are calculated in fixed prices (adjusted for changes in foreign trade price indices).

2 Services exports are calculated in real terms (using the Consumer Price Index).

3 The job vacancy rate is calculated out of the total number of employed people and vacancies and is included in the index at its seasonally adjusted level.

4 Since the Central Bureau of Statistics publishes data on building starts once per quarter, the data integrated into the model are at a monthly frequency based on additional sources, such that the distribution is consistent with the quarterly data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (in percent, seasonally adjusted).

 

 

 

 

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