Personal and Corporate Saving in South Africa

Low domestic saving rates in South Africa may perpetuate a low-growthtrap. The decline in government satfing, a major reason forthe overall decline in saving, is now being reversed. However,personal saving rates have fallen since 1993, and corporaterates since 1995, and both may decline further with lower realinterest rates. It is important to understand both personaland corporate saving behavior in order to formulate policiesto raise the domestic saving rate in line with the needs ofeconomic growth. This article summarizes previous work on thehousehold sector, emphasizing the role of financial liberalization,assets, and income expectations, and explains sectoral linksand policy implications. Further, it analyzes South Africa'scorporate saving rate in detail. Models are developed both forthe share of profits in national income, including the rolesof the terms of trade, tax effects, and the price to unit laborcost ratio, and for the share of corporate saving in profits,which is found to depend on inflation, the real interest rate,dividend taxation, and financial liberalization. Corporate savingis remarkably underresearched, given its importance in manyeconomies. This research thus puts the saving and growth concernsof Kaldor into a modern empirical context.