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The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for February 2014 increased by 0.2 percent. The rate of increase in the Index is stable, and indicates that the economy continues to grow at a similar rate to that of the recent period. Increases in the trade and services revenue indices contributed notably to the rise in the Index this month, while declines in indices of goods and services exports, imports of manufacturing inputs, and industrial production moderated the increase in the Index. Index data for previous months (Table 1) were revised slightly upward, due to a small upward revision by the Central Bureau of Statistics in the services revenue index for previous months, and due to updated services exports data.[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
February
 
0.22
January
0.27
0.31
December
0.20
0.22
November
0.20
0.25

 

Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months

(Monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)

 

 
February
January
December
November
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
-1.37
1.84
-0.59
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
3.57
-0.57
-0.04
Trade Revenue Index
 
1.56
0.01
0.76
Imports of consumer goods3
0.25
2.01
0.66
5.09
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
-2.32
3.74
-1.61
1.26
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
-1.38
8.81
-6.31
0.93
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
-1.22
14.52
2.01
0.05
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
0.33
0.23
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
2.58
2.60
2.60
2.61
Building starts2
 
 
96.55
98.56

 

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: http://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx
 
[1] The January increase in other services exports (excluding transport) based on CBS data was sharper than forecast by the model which fills in) using foreign exchange transactions reported to the Bank of Israel) missing real-time services exports data unavailable from the CBS when the index is calculated.