Poles have saved at least between €6.6 billion and €7.7 billion in December 2020 alone, the largest amount of savings since at least 1996, according to the report of HRE Investments chief analyst Bartosz Turek.
The report from HRE investments provides data on the money intended for the purchase of treasury bonds (saved externally from banks), money spent on purchasing investment funds, as well as on properties and money deposited in banks.
“Despite the outflow of €813 million from deposits, we have gathered so much money on regular and saving accounts that the collective sum held by Poles in banks has increased by €5.14 billion. This is the largest monthly growth of savings in the history of research conducted by the central bank, so since 1996,” Turek wrote in his report.
He believes that the reason for this record is not because Poles saving “for a rainy day”. It was fostered by smaller spending associated with Christmas and New Year’s. Moreover, most people usually earn more money in December.
According to Statistics Poland data, the salaries in companies which hire more than nine people increased by 6.6 percent compared to December 2019.
Turek added that December is also the month in which many companies pay out bonuses, which is why there is a difference between November and December. He admitted, however, that the result for January will be lower, but people employed in the entrepreneurial industries earned €702 million in extra income.
The analyst also pointed out that much money in December could have been spent on purchasing properties. Vague estimates based on National Bank of Poland (NBP) and Eurostat data suggest that Poles may have spent a few billion złotys on houses in just a month.
Moreover, €790 million more was paid into investment funds than was withdrawn from them in December. Additionally, many Poles still do not trust financial institutions and keep their money externally from banks. NBP data suggests that just in December there was €571 million more cash in circulation than in November.
The analyst also stated that December was favorable to gold investment distributors as Poles increasingly purchase bars and coins online. In December, the prices of gold went up, with Poles potentially seeing gold as a hedge against inflation. Poland currently has the fastest-growing inflation rate in the EU.
In terms of the future, the analyst forecasted that January will deliver positive data concerning the sales of retail treasury bonds. HRE investment data suggests that Poles have filed a large number of orders for the purchase of treasury bonds in January so far.
