The number of Russians who have savings has decreased in third for the past year, says the poll by Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. The citizens gave up waiting for positive dynamics in economy and see no point in saving up.
The number of Russians with savings in 2016 was 40% — almost a third less than the previous year, when this figure was at the level of 55%. «However, in 2015, even under drastic worsening of commonwealth, there was no drop in savings. People stopped saving money and started spending it in the beginning of 2016 and it had nothing to do with worsening of commonwealth of the population», — say the authors of the research. Such dynamics they explain by changing of economic expectations — now people less often «plan their own economic future».
In 2015 the respondents held an opinion that problems in economy were temporary and the situation was going to change soon. Now the followers of this point of view reduced to 51%. At the same time, the number of those who believe that economy is at a critical stage has almost doubled (22% against 12% the year before). Another 22% are sure that economy is facing a period of prolonged crisis; a year ago 19% represented this opinion.
The number of followers of the opinion that economy has no serious problems remains on a very low level — 5% against 6% previous year. 6000 people took part in this research (600 people from 10 regions).
«Due to the fact that people are not expecting economic situation to get better, the value of savings is decreasing. People don’t see the point in saving money expecting that when economic situation improves (in particular due to decrease of inflation) they will have a chance to do planned purchases, start a business and so on. That’s why those who used to save money started spending it», — was said in the research.
Savings rate to income in 2016 decreased approaching the rates of 2012-2013 years, wrote the analysts of the Research and Forecast Department of Central Bank in their last review «What the trends say». It can «prove the gradual stabilization of savings behavior of the population». According to analysts, savings rate might keep reducing because of the growth of credit debt.
Most often the Russians have a sum of several month incomes at their disposal. 52% of citizens prefer to keep the savings on a time-deposit in a bank (a year before there were 64% of them). Along with that, people started keeping savings on bank cards or in cash (36% and 23% correspondingly against 29% and 18% a year before).
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