The household saving rate and the household investment rate dropped in the European Union and in the 16-member euro zone in the first quarter of 2010, according to a detailed set of quarterly European sector accounts released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, and the European Central Bank (ECB).
 
In the euro area in Q1 2010, household disposable income fell by 0.6 per cent in real terms.
 
In Q1 2010, the seasonally adjusted gross saving rate of households was 13 per cent in the 27-member EU, compared with 13.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009. In the euro area, the household saving rate was 14.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, compared with 15 per cent in the previous quarter.
 
Meanwhile, in the first half of 2010, Bulgarians continued to cut down spending as companies withdrew bank savings to prop up their operations, according to Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) data on the deposit market as of the end of June 2010.
 
According to a report by daily Dnevnik on the BNB figures, the market grew at a modest rate in the first half of the year, reaching 25.539 billion leva at the end of the period, up 13.4 per cent year-on-year.
 
A slight surge in household deposits shows that in spite of a declining rate of pay and disposable income, Bulgarians have opted to save.
 
The pace of 0.2 per cent to three per cent for the past year is dwarfed by the double-digit growth rates seen in previous years. In 2009, bankers in Bulgaria were saying that the market’s potential is depleting.
 
At the end of June, the interest rates on term deposits retreated to their autumn 2008 levels before the onset of the deposit war, reaching six per cent and five per cent for leva and euro, respectively.
 
On the other hand, company money in bank deposits increased in H1 2010, reaching 12.050 billion leva. A year earlier, the figure was 12.204 billion leva. This is down 1.3 per cent year-on-year as companies withdraw savings to use as operating capital as bank financing is hard to come by.