Portugal's Savings Certificates Reached a Record 44.6 Billion Euros in August, While Treasury Certificates Sank to Their Lowest Level Since 2014
Households put a net 753 million euros into Certificados de Aforro last month. The state's other retail savings product lost 91 million, its 58th consecutive month of net redemptions, and a relaunched ten-year series has not turned it around.
The Bank of Portugal published its monthly public debt statistics on Monday morning, and they show the state's two savings products moving in opposite directions. Certificados de Aforro (savings certificates) closed August at a record 44,604 million euros, after households put in a net 753 million during the month. Certificados do Tesouro (treasury certificates) closed it at 6,441 million, the lowest the product has stood since December 2014.
One product keeps setting records
August was the second month running in which net subscriptions to savings certificates cleared 750 million euros. July brought 768 million, August 753 million. Measured against August last year, when the stock stood at 38,547 million euros, the product has grown by almost 16 percent in twelve months.
Savings certificates are sold only to individuals, over the counter at CTT post offices or online through the AforroNet platform run by the Agência de Gestão da Tesouraria e da Dívida Pública (Treasury and Public Debt Management Agency). The current Série F pays a rate that tracks the three-month Euribor, which is what carried it through the period when bank deposit rates were slow to follow the market up. That formula has a ceiling, and we reported last month that the Euribor has now overtaken the 2.5 percent level written into it, so savers stop sharing in further increases from here.
The other has been shrinking for 58 months
Treasury certificates are the longer-dated product, designed to be held for years rather than drawn on. August was the 58th consecutive month in which more money left the product than went into it. The stock fell by 91 million euros on the month, a drop of 1.4 percent, and is down 24.2 percent on August 2025.
That is a long way from where the product peaked. In October 2021 savers held 17,865 million euros in treasury certificates. They now hold about a third of that.
The decline has continued through a relaunch. In early July the government replaced the old Certificados do Tesouro Poupança Valor with a new ten-year Série 5, which pays up to 3.35 percent in its final year and drew close to 300 million euros in its first month on the finance ministry's own account. Even so, the combined stock has fallen by 119 million euros across the two months the new series has been on sale, because redemptions of older certificates are still outrunning the new money.
What it means if you are choosing between them
The business daily ECO, which examined the new series this month, calculates an average gross rate of 2.71 percent across its ten years and an effective net return of about 1.8 percent on amounts between 1,000 and 48,732 euros. That is below the European Central Bank's 2 percent inflation target, and below what savings certificates pay for as long as the three-month Euribor stays above roughly 2.09 percent.
That comparison is the plainest explanation for the two lines in Monday's data. One product is indexed to a rate that is currently high, the other locks in a fixed schedule for a decade, and Portuguese households have spent 58 months voting for the first.
Both remain state debt, so both carry the credit of the Portuguese Republic rather than the 100,000 euro deposit guarantee that covers bank accounts. The practical differences are the term, the penalty for early withdrawal and the ceilings on how much one saver may hold, and those are set separately for each product.
