Savings withdrawals outweigh deposits by BRL 12.37 billion in November, says BC

Withdrawals exceeded savings deposits for the fourth straight month in November. Last month, there was a net withdrawal of R$ 12.377 billion from the passbooks, informed this Monday the Central Bank.

This was also the third consecutive negative record for a given month in the historical series, started in 1995. The volumes of outflows in September (R$7.719 billion) and October (R$7.430 billion) were also unprecedented for the respective months.

In November, contributions to savings totaled R$281.713 billion, while withdrawals totaled R$294.090 billion. This movement generated a total net withdrawal of R$ 12.377 billion in the month. Considering the income of R$ 3.648 billion from the passbook in November, the total balance of accounts was R$ 1.018 trillion.

November was the seventh month of 2021 in which withdrawals exceeded savings deposits. In January, February and March, Brazilians had also withdrawn funds from the booklet. From January to November, the population withdrew R$ 43.156 billion net from the booklet.

Only between April and July there were net deposits in passbooks, influenced by the return of emergency aid payments for a portion of the population. Payments started on April 6th.

Since August, however, amid high inflation, savings have returned to register more withdrawals than contributions.

Savings are currently remunerated at the reference rate (TR), which is at zero, plus 70% of the Selic (the basic interest rate), currently at 7.75% per year.

In practice, the current remuneration of savings accounts is 5.425% per year. The percentage does not necessarily cover inflation.

This savings remuneration rule applies whenever the Selic rate is below 8.50% per year. When it is above that – which should happen from this week onwards – the savings will be updated by the TR plus a fixed rate of 0.5% per month (6.17% per year).