Contributing to negative external balances Another way of looking at this is to say that we are consuming and investing much more than we are saving. The Government has had a strong saving record over the last decade, and more recently the business sector has been saving too.
But the household sector, which represents a large part of the economy, has been running down its savings in spectacular fashion. While we may contest the validity of some of the data, there is little doubt we are now dissaving at about 12 per cent, very low by OECD standards.