Consumers saved more in the first three months of the year than in the recent past, despite the marked uptick in the price of the basket of commodities Filipinos generally consume during the period.
Latest data from a survey conducted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed significantly higher savings rate among consumers across the country in the January-to-March quarter.
Personal savings in the first quarter hit 34.9 percent, up from 32.7 percent in the same quarter last year, as the percentage of households with savings increased in areas in and out of the National Capital Region (NCR).
Personal savings result from income minus taxes minus consumption.
The first-quarter savings of Filipinos was also higher than the previous quarter’s 32.6 percent.
The uptick in consumer savings came despite generally higher prices during the period. In the first two months of 2017, inflation averaged 3 percent, higher than the 1.1 percent seen in the first-quarter the previous year.
The first-quarter 2017 inflation was also higher than the previous quarter’s 2.5 percent.
The BSP said respondents cited emergencies, education, retirement, health and hospitalization, business capital and investment and the purchase of real estate as top motivators for saving money.
Among the savers, the BSP said 67.6 percent—or more than two-thirds—had bank deposit accounts.
However, 39.6 percent kept their savings at home, 22.9 percent put their money in cooperatives, paluwagan and other credit associations as investment.
For the next quarter, respondents who said they would set aside money as savings increased to 45.1 percent.
There was a period when the savings of a typical Filipino household averaged a mere 5 percent of disposable income, indicating less compulsion to prepare for the proverbial rainy day, in part because of financial constraints and less prudence, according to an income and expenditure survey conducted years earlier by the Asian Development Bank.