The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index increased by 0.1 percent in September 2015, lower than its average rate of growth in recent months. The increase in the Composite Index derived primarily from an increase in the Industrial Production index and in the revenue indices for August, and by an increase in the job vacancy rate for September. In contrast, the slowdown in the Composite Index’s rate of growth derived from a sharp decline in goods exports in September and from declines of consumer goods imports  and imports of manufacturing inputs in that same month. This month there were no significant revisions to the Index’s growth in 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
September
 
0.11
August
0.29
0.30
July
0.25
0.25
June
0.37
0.38
 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
Sept. 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
2.8
-3.4
3.7
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
0.5
-0.5
2.8
Trade Revenue Index
 
1.1
-0.6
1.2
Imports of consumer goods3
-11.5
6.0
-1.4
3.6
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
-4.6
1.5
-0.2
6.6
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
-8.3
-3.5
5.6
-2.5
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
1.6
-1.5
2.6
-2.3
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
0.1
0.2
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
3.48
3.32
3.27
3.37
Building starts2
 
 
0.2
1.3
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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