The India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) in its latest report has warned that if the declining trend of household savings continues, it may pose a serious challenge to overall economic growth and the macroeconomic stability. It noted that the household savings rate has plunged to 16.3% as compared to 23.6% between fiscals 2012 and 2017. It pointed out that the fall was mainly due to the shocks from demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation. It said that these twin policy shock although had economy-wide ramification, it was more pronounced in the case of the household sector.
According to the report, the household savings rates plummeted 153 bps in FY17, while for private corporations fell only 12 bps, while savings rate for the public sector increased 37 bps. But the overall impact was a 128 bps decline in the savings rate. It noted that since this sector is the largest contributor to savings in the economy, the overall savings rate declined to about 30 percent in FY17, after remaining well above 32% for many years. In FY12, the rate was a robust 34.6%. It also said that household savings include savings by households, not-for-profit institutions and quasi-corporates, and it is the largest contributor to the savings in the economy. It added that these savings, intermediated by banks and non-banking financial entities, are a major source of investment funding.
The ratings agency said that declining share of household sector is visible even in the case of nominal gross value added (GVA), where its share declined to 43.2% in FY17 from 45.5% in FY12. It attributed this to the lower nominal GVA growth of the household sector compared to the private corporations and the overall economy. It mentioned that in FY17, the household sector contributed 94.8% to agriculture, 27.5% to industrial and 34.4% to services sectors’ nominal GVA. It also observed that tighter financial conditions (increasing median working capital days) have been one of the key reasons for the slowdown in the household sector’s growth.
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