Nearly 36 % of Poles believe that their financial situation worsened over the past year, including 10.3 % who say it worsened a lot, according to the Central Statistical Office’s (CSO) consumer sentiment survey.
The percentage claiming that their situation has got worse increased by 2.2 % compared to November. Many indications are that it was in December, in view of Christmas spending, that we took a more realistic glance into our wallets.
As many as 21.4 % of Poles expect their financial situation to improve, the best result since March 2020. Deterioration is expected by 25.3 %, with only 1.4 % of respondents expecting a significant improvement and 5.2 % expecting a big deterioration.
The economic sentiment indicator, which measures our willingness to make purchases, dropped the most among the indicators measured by the Central Statistical Office (GUS) in December 2023 compared to November, by 5.1 points to -19.3. The index reflecting future saving of money also dropped – to -1.5 points from +2 points a month earlier.
Nearly half of Poles intend to save money. As many as 49% are planning to put aside “any” money in the next 12 months. However, this is not the highest percentage in recent months, and is in fact the lowest since September last year. 43.1% of Poles are convinced that they will not save anything. However, this is the second lowest response rate since September 2021.
On the one hand, 2.3 % of respondents are convinced that they can save a lot, while on the other hand, 1 % are going into debt. 5.2 % of Poles are currently withdrawing life savings from their wallets.
The CSO also asked about the perception of the country’s economic situation in the last 12 months. And here, the prevalence of negative assessments is much higher, as it was 57.9 %. This is worse than in November 2023 (57.3 %), but at the same time the least since October 2021. “At the same time, the percentage of those who view Poland’s economy with optimism fell, with only 14.4 % assessing that the situation has improved, which is the worst result since September”, reports Business Insider.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński