The shekel was stronger against the dollar and the euro this morning in inter-bank foreign currency trading. The shekel dollar exchange rate was down 0.4% to NIS 3.524/$, and down 0.1% against the euro to NIS 5.076/€.
In the foreign currency market yesterday, the Bank of Israel set the shekel-dollar representative exchange rate up 0.51% to NIS 3.538/$, and the shekel-euro representative exchange rate up 0.90% to NIS 5.081/€.
Foreign currency trading in Tel Aviv is in the wake of yesterday's data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, which showed that GDP growth in the second quarter slowed to 3.3% from 4.7% in the first quarter of 2011, and 7.4% in the fourth quarter of 2010.
However, the slowdown in growth was not as severe as expected, with the analysts' consensus of 2.9% according to "Bloomberg." Moreover, the Israeli data looks positively impressive alongside the poor figures published yesterday about growth in the euro bloc, which was only 0.2% in the second quarter of 2011. In Germany, growth in the second quarter was only 0.1%.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 17, 2011
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