For the first time after the war, the savings of the citizens of B&H in commercial banks exceeded the amount of 10 billion BAM, and 525 citizens of B&H have more than one million of savings!
At the end of December 2015, savings of the citizens in FB&H exceeded the amount of 7.4 billion BAM (2,700 BAM per capita), while the savings of the citizens of Republika Srpska exceeded the amount of 2.8 billion BAM (2,000 BAM per capita) at the end of last year.
Total deposits of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite of the crisis, increased by little over 5 billion BAM since the end of 2008 until the end of 2015, which is an increase by nearly 90 percent!
For the past several years, savings of B&H citizens are rapidly growing at an exceptionally high rate of ten percent on annual level, which is five times more than the real growth of gross domestic product.
Bankers agree in their assessment that citizens are strongly attracted to saving by the extremely liberal tax system and especially high interest rates on fixed term savings, which are up to 50 percent higher than the European average. Unlike majority of European countries, there is no tax on capital income in B&H, thus the saver does not pay tax for income generated from interest rates.
Besides that, passive interest rates – those that the bank pays to the savers – are incomparably higher than the European average. For example, a saver in Germany can expect the highest interest rate of 1.5 percent, while passive interest rates for fixed term savings in B&H range from 2.5 to 3.5 percent.
More than 50 percent of total savings deposits is in the hands of a relatively small number of persons – 34,000 of them – which makes only 1.2 percent of total population in B&H. however, this handful of people have more money in banks than the remaining 3.8 million residents together!
There are currently 525 millionaires in B&H and all millionaires together have 650 million BAM on their accounts.
On the other side, citizens of B&H currently owe 8.5 billion BAM to the banks, which means that the total savings of the citizens is by around 1.5 billion BAM higher than the total indebtedness.
(Source: vijesti.ba)
