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The monthly Index of Economic Activity[1] increased by 0.3 percent in December. The index this month reflects the average monthly growth estimate for the three months from October to December. The Index was positively influenced by data on credit card purchases in November, goods export data for October and December, exports of other services and tourism services in September and October, labor market and indirect taxes data in October and November, income tax and health tax receipts in November, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange stock index and the Nasdaq index in recent months, and gasoline consumption data for November. In contrast, retail trade data for October and November and imports of durable consumption goods for October and December moderated the increase in the index (Tables 1 and 2).
The pace of increase of the index is similar the long-term growth trend (about 0.3 percent).
The Index for November was revised slightly upward with the completion of data that were previously missing.
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 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).