The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for September 2016 increased by 0.3 percent, slightly higher than its rate of growth since the beginning of the year. The increase in the import and export indices and the increase in the Industrial Production index contributed to this increase, while the decline in the trade and services revenue indices moderated the increase of the Composite Index.
Upward revisions in the growth rate of business sector product during the second quarter, and in industrial production figures for previous months led to an upward revision in the Composite 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 |
September |
0.33 | |
August |
0.17 |
0.24 |
July |
0.15 |
0.23 |
June |
0.23 |
0.25 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
September 2016 |
August 2016 |
July 2016 |
June 2016 | |
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
3.9 |
-2.1 |
2.1 | |
Services Revenue Index (excluding education, and public administration) |
-1.3 |
-2.8 |
3.9 | |
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
-2.7 |
1.7 |
-0.3 | |
Imports of consumer goods1 |
7.7 |
-3.9 |
-0.9 |
-4.2 |
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
0.6 |
-2.0 |
2.5 |
-2.8 |
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 1 |
1.5 |
-2.5 |
-0.3 |
4.3 |
Services exports (excluding transportation) 1 |
-5.4 |
7.8 | ||
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
0.4 |
0.2 | ||
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector2 |
4.1 |
4.0 |
3.5 | |
Building starts3 |
10.3 |
1 Foreign trade indices are quantitative (in contrast to CBS monthly foreign trade indices).
2 The job vacancy rate is included in the Index at its level, seasonally adjusted and smoothed.
3 Since the Central Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing monthly figures on building starts, beginning in July 2016 the method of calculation of the building starts component of the Index was changed. The component is calculated at a quarterly frequency, and the change (seasonally adjusted, in percent) is attributed to the last month of the quarter for which the figure is published. The other months in the quarter are missing values for which the variable value is estimated in the model.
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