The portion of disposable income that Portuguese families manage to channel savings has been declining

The household savings rate remains at minimum levels since at least 1995, the first year for which the INE provides this data, closing the year 2014 at 6.9% of disposable income.

According to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the savings rate, which in 2009 was 10.9%, fell to 7.7% in 2011, the year in which Portugal resorted to external financial assistance, after having initiated a recovery process even if moderate.

In 2012, the Portuguese households saved 8.2% of their disposable income, and the next year, the savings rate rose slightly to 8.3%. However, in 2014, the trend was reversed and this year, the household saving rate was 6.9%.

The latest figures indicate that this indicator continued to fall in the second quarter 2014, reaching 5% of household income in the year to June this year.

The first year for which the INE registers these data, 1995 was one in which the household saving rate was higher, corresponding to 12.9% of disposable income.

In the following decade, the household savings rate hovered around 10% and, since 2006, this indicator was just above 10% in 2009, when it reached 10.9%.

Since then, the portion of disposable income that Portuguese families manage to channel savings has declined.

According to the Bank of Portugal (BoP), retail deposits at commercial banks, the most common savings instruments, are over 130 billion euros since November 2012, the month in which the families had deposited 130,158 million.

The latest figures are from August this year and indicate that the Portuguese had deposits amounting to 136,759 million euros this month, over 2992 million euros than in August 2014.

In the first eight months of 2015, the amount invested in deposits increased 3,954 million euros since the end of 2014, the Portuguese had invested 132,805 million euros in this savings instrument, according to the BoP.

The World Savings Day is celebrated on October 31 and was created in 1924 at the First International Economics Congress, held in the Italian city of Milan.

[Source]