The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for January 2016 increased by 0.2 percent. The Index increased this month due to the figure for growth of business sector product, which increased by 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, and despite the decline in the other components of the Index. Data on business sector product growth are not available when the monthly Composite Index is published, but they are included in it with a lag and impact on the Index’s trend. The positive trend of the Index reflects the assessment that the basic rate of growth of the economy is positive. The publication of growth data led to an upward revision of the Composite Index data for previous months (Figure 1). Among the declines in monthly components, the decline in imports of manufacturing inputs was notable this month. The other monthly components declined by a moderate rate. 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 |
January 2016 |
0.19 | |
December 2015 |
0.22 |
0.27 |
November 2015 |
0.28 |
0.38 |
October 2015 |
0.25 |
0.34 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
January 2016 |
December 2015 |
November 2015 |
October 2015 | |
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
-0.1 |
7.3 |
-1.9 | |
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration) |
-0.6 |
0.5 |
1.0 | |
Trade Revenue Index |
-2.7 |
2.3 |
0.7 | |
Imports of consumer goods3 |
-1.6 |
5.7 |
-3.9 |
10.6 |
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3 |
-8.9 |
4.5 |
-3.9 |
4.5 |
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3 |
-1.8 |
-1.9 |
4.0 |
4.4 |
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3 |
-0.7 |
1.2 |
0.1 |
4.4 |
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
0.4 |
0.1 | ||
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1 |
3.32 |
3.75 |
3.40 |
3.26 |
Building starts2 |
-0.7 |
-2.7 |
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).
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