How many rich people are there in Bulgaria, judging by their savings?
How many are the real rich people in Bulgaria, judging by their savings? According to official BNB statistics, household savings by the end of 2021 amount to BGN 66.5 billion. Does this mean that Bulgarian households, although in the context of many crises in numbers, have improved their financial situation ?
The answer lies in the structure of these savings, is included in the analysis specifically for BTA by the Institute for Social and Trade Union Research of CITUB. Measuring inequalities is done by many every year, but measuring inequalities in general well-being is a far more difficult task. The data on the structure of deposits are a good indicator, which should not say much about the financial capabilities of the Bulgarian. Through them, we can indirectly assess inequalities on a much larger scale. This is because people’s savings are often the result not only of the income they receive, but also of other factors.
The Bulgarian National Bank publishes quarterly statistics on the balance of household deposits. The last ones are as of December 2021. Let’s look at the situation with the savings of domestic production as of December 31, 2021, according to BNB data.
|
Value (million BGN) |
Total number of deposits |
up to BGN 1,000 |
845 918 |
5,107,489 |
over BGN 2,500 to 5,000 |
2,739,590 |
752 570 |
over BGN 5,000 to 10,000 |
5,666,120 |
795 416 |
over BGN 10,000 to 50,000 |
24 337 201 |
1 147 405 |
over BGN 50,000 to 100,000 |
11,618,282 |
168 854 |
over BGN 100,000 to BGN 1,000,000 |
16 923 410 |
95 008 |
over BGN 1,000,000 |
2,721,529 |
1052 |
Total: |
66 539 548 |
9,083,661 |
As of December 2021, households in Bulgaria have 9 million deposits in all banks with a total value of 66.5 billion. This means that an average of BGN 7,380 is deposited on one deposit. But does every Bulgarian who has a deposit in the bank have this money? Of course not. This amount is expected when we trust the average values. The assumption is as true as the fact that the majority of people have an average salary. Let’s see what the reality is:
- The reality is that 67 percent of all deposits (6.1 million deposits) amount to BGN 2,500;
- That 67 percent is worth a total of just 2.5 billion. This is only 3.8 percent of the total value of all deposits. This is the question, where are the other billions? Where there is a little over BGN 63 billion left, given that 67 percent of household deposits are not part of them. They are here, they are just inhomogeneously distributed, as can be seen from the table.
- The number of deposits over BGN 100,000 is a total of 90,060 or 1.06 percent of the total number of deposits. This is normal. After all, there are hardly many people who can split that much money on deposit. We note that the total value of these deposits is BGN 19.6 billion. Therefore, about 30 percent of the total value of deposits is concentrated only 1 percent of their number. If we add to these numbers the deposits from BGN 50,000 to BGN 100,000, it will be seen that BGN 31 billion (47 percent of the total value) are concentrated in exactly 2.9 percent of the total number of deposits in the country;
- As you can see from the table, deposits from BGN 10,000 to BGN 50,000 are 12.6 percent of the total number and consolidate in themselves a financial resource of BGN 24.3 billion, which is approximately 37 percent of the total value.
- The next element for calculation can be safely concluded that BGN 55.6 billion (84 percent of the total value of all deposits) collected only 1.4 million deposits, which is 15 percent of their total number.
Of course, not always one deposit corresponds to one individual. Most Bulgarians do not have any deposits, and another, smaller, has several. Therefore, these numbers had an even more negative dimension, focused on what has been described so far. But even assuming an optimistic option in which 1 deposit is equal to 1 person, this seems too worrying.
For example, did you know that Elon Musk has exactly 3 times more than the entire BVP in Bulgaria and 5 times more than all the savings in Bulgarian households? In fact, each person in the top 20 richest people in the world has more money than the money of all households in Bulgaria combined.
All these figures estimate that society has a serious problem in the redistribution of resources. Of course, there is no way to achieve complete symmetry, no one is the goal of such a thing, but it is not normal to monitor such inhomogeneity in the distribution of people’s savings. This inhomogeneity has been deteriorating over the last few years, compared to previous BNB data.
It is not normal, for example, for 12 months, the total number of deposits decreased by about 3 percent or 300,000 on a small deposit compared to December 2020, but according to the value of the increases of 8.3 percent. And this is provided that the lowest deposits continue to decline, and the highest tend to increase. Therefore, the time when you hear or read that “household savings for the next year have grown”, keep in mind exactly what lies behind this growth.
Authors: Dr. Lyuboslav Kostov, Director of the Institute for Social and Trade Union Research (ISSI), Alessandria Angelova, researcher at ISSI