Statistics authority: Greek households continue to use savings in order to maintain consumption

Greek households continued to "dip" into their savings in order to maintain their rate of consumption at a fixed level, Greece’s independent statistics authority revealed this week.

According to figures supplied by the authority (EL.STAT), households’ savings – defined as gross savings in relation to the gross disposable income – dropped by 6 percent in the third quarter of 2017, compared to the corresponding period in 2016.

The same rate of decrease, -6 percent, was recorded in Q3 2016 compared to Q3 2015, a trend bereft of signs of improvement.

Conversely, disposable income by households and non-profit institutions catering to households posted a marginal increase of 0.8 percent in the third trimester of 2017, compared with the same quarter in 2016.

In absolute terms, the disposal income figure for Q3 2017 was tallied at 29.4 billion euros, compared to 29.2 billion euros in the same quarter of 2016.