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The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for September increased by 0.3 percent. The rate of increase in the Index in recent months reflects, among other things, the acceleration in the rate of increase of business sector product in the second quarter[1], which was apparently due to the start of natural gas production. Other than that, the increase in the Index reflects moderate but stable growth. The increase in the Index also reflects mainly the increase in consumer goods imports and manufacturing inputs following a decline in these items last month. These increases were moderated by declines in industrial production, services exports, and the job vacancy rate. The rates of change for pervious months were revised upward following an upward revision made by the Central Bureau of Statistics in some of the series, and particularly in services exports data for 2013 and in industrial production data for 2012. A further factor in the upward revision of the Index is the update made to the coefficients in the model, which improved the correlation between business sector product growth and changes in the Composite Index. Table 2 presents the development of components of the Index in the past few months.
Table 1: Revisions in the Composite Index
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
For additional data and explanations please click here.
http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx [1] Quarterly business sector product growth data, which are not available when the monthly Composite Index is published, are included with a lag, such that the rate of the Index’s growth expresses the monthly rate of business product growth over time.