Lithuanians saved EUR 6.2 b during pandemic – c.bank

VILNIUS - Lithuanian residents saved 6.2 billion euros during the two-year coronavirus pandemic, which is the amount of money they did not spend even in the face of rapidly rising inflation and declining purchasing power, the central Bank of Lithuania said on Friday. Almost three-quarters of this amount were invested in financial assets and one-fifth was injected into other assets.

"A comparison of consumption and income of the population during and after the pandemic with the trends before the pandemic shows that people in Lithuania accumulated additional savings of 6.2 billion euros in 2020-2021," Darius Imbrasas, chief economist at the Bank of Lithuania's Macroeconomic and Forecasting Division, said in a statement.

The indicator showing the share of income households do not spend on consumption was three to five times above the historical average in 2020-2021.

Between 1995 and 2019, on average, people did not consume slightly more than 3 percent of their income, and it stood at 14.5 percent in 2020 and 10.9 percent in 2021. Only in 2022, when the economy again faced new challenges, did the rate fall to 4.8 percent.