The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for October 2014 increased by 0.1 percent. The Index’s rate of growth remains slow, similar to its growth rate since the beginning of the year. The recent fluctuations in the pace of growth of the Index, and in the growth rate in the economy, are mainly the result of the ramifications of Operation Protective Edge. The Index was positively impacted this month by increases in most of the indices, mainly the increases in the Industrial Production Index and in the trade revenue and services revenue indices for September. The decline in the imports indices and in building starts in August moderated the Index’s rate of increase. There were no significant revisions in the index’s rate of increase in recent 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
October
 
0.06
September
0.18
0.16
August
0.10
0.09
July
-0.02
-0.04
 
 
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
 
October
September
August
July
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying)
 
1.4
4.0
-1.0
Services Revenue Index (excluding finance, education, and public administration)
 
1.0
1.9
-2.2
Trade Revenue Index
 
4.1
2.1
-4.4
Imports of consumer goods3
-0.1
-5.3
6.7
-2.5
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)3
-2.8
-0.3
-1.0
-1.5
Goods exports (excluding agriculture) 3
2.0
7.1
-4.9
0.6
Services exports (excluding transportation) 3
0.0
1.2
-5.0
-2.1
Number of employee posts in the private sector
 
 
-0.2
-0.8
Rate of vacant employee posts out of total number of employed people in the business sector1
2.70
2.65
2.66
2.67
Building starts2
 
 
-4.9
3.1
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