The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for September 2014 increased by 0.2 percent. The Index’s rate of growth is more rapid than its growth rate in previous months, when the Index was affected by, among other things, the negative ramifications of Operation Protective Edge. The Index was positively impacted this month by increases in goods exports and services exports indices for September, by an increase in building starts, and by increases in the industrial production, trade revenue, and services revenue indices for August. In contrast, the decline in the consumer goods imports index and in the job vacancy rate moderated the Index’s rate of increase. The Index for August was revised upward (Table 1), due to more positive than expected data on industrial production and trade and services revenue indices.[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
September
 
0.18
August
0.00
0.10
July
-0.03
-0.02
June
0.08
0.10

 

Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
September
August
July
June
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
3.5
-0.6
-0.2
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
1.3
-2.6
2.0
Trade Revenue Index
 
1.9
-4.8
0.4
Imports of consumer goods3
-5.4
7.5
-1.9
0.3
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
0.7
-0.8
-1.0
-0.8
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
1.9
-5.3
0.1
-2.0
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
1.6
-5.1
-3.5
-1.0
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
-0.8
0.1
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
2.61
2.65
2.66
2.66
Building starts2
 
 
3.2
-2.7

 

1 The rate of job vacancies at its actual level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
2 Six-month moving average.
3 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
 
For additional data and explanations please click here.

 

 
 
[1] Due to the lag in availability of some components of the composite index in the current month, projections based on additional sources of data are used on a monthly basis in order to fill in the latest observations which are unavailable. The better than expected data also positively impacted the Composite Index for previous months as well.