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The monthly Index of Economic Activity[1] declined by 0.4 percent in May. The Index this month reflects the average monthly growth estimate for the three months from March to May. The Index was adversely impacted by trade and services revenue data and industrial production data in March, and by data on the import of consumption goods and indirect tax revenues in May. In addition, data on actual GDP in the first quarter of 2026 contributed negatively to the Index. In contrast, data on credit card purchases and financial data on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange General Shares Index and the Nasdaq index in April and May, and goods exports in May moderated the Index’s decline (Tables 1 and 2).
The pace of increase of the index is below the long-term growth trend (about 0.3 percent).
The Index for the past two months was revised downward with the completion of data that were previously missing and with the additional downward revision in growth data for the first quarter of 2026.
Figure 1 presents the Index data over the past two years. Table 1 presents the contributions of the Index’s components to the overall estimate and the revisions to the Index, and Table 2 presents the monthly rate of change in the Index’s components.
FIGURE 1: The Monthly Index of Economic Activity
* The table presents the contribution of each group of components in the monthly index, such that the monthly estimate constitutes the sum of the contributions of each of the components detailed in the table. Some of the raw data influence the monthly estimate with a lag or influence the estimates of several months.
[1] The monthly Index of Economic Activity reflects the three-month average of the estimated monthly growth of GDP. The estimate is based on a model developed at the Bank of Israel (Ginker and Suhoy, 2021).