Portuguese Savers Cross €50 Billion in State Certificates for the First Time, but the Treasury's Own Product Kept Shrinking in July

Portuguese households were holding €50.38 billion in state savings certificates at the end of July, the first time the combined total has cleared €50 billion. The figure comes from the Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal) securities statistics published on Thursday, and it lands almost entirely on the strength of one product while the other quietly shrinks.

Certificados de Aforro, the classic retail savings certificate, accounted for €43.851 billion of the total. Certificados do Tesouro, the Treasury's own instrument, accounted for €6.532 billion. The two have been moving in opposite directions for years, and July was no exception.

The savings certificate had its best month in three years

Aforro certificates took in a net €767.7 million during July, the largest monthly inflow in more than three years. That is a 22nd consecutive monthly increase and leaves the stock at its highest level since the Bank of Portugal series began in December 1998. Measured against July 2025, holdings are up €5.629 billion, or 14.7%.

The rate is doing the work. Aforro subscriptions in July paid a base rate of 2.356%, and the rate on new subscriptions moved up to 2.474% for August. That sits comfortably above what most Portuguese banks pay on ordinary term deposits, and the certificates carry a sovereign guarantee with no ceiling on the protection, unlike a bank account. The IGCP, the state debt agency, also removed the €5,000 ceiling on online purchases earlier this summer, which made it materially easier to move a large sum in one go.

The Treasury product is on its 57th month of outflows

Certificados do Tesouro went the other way, losing €27.77 million over the month to finish at €6.532 billion. That is the lowest reading since January 2015, a fall of 24.5% on the year (€2.125 billion), and, on ECO's count, a 57th consecutive month of net outflows.

What makes that number interesting is what sits underneath it. The Treasury launched a new ten-year certificate, the Certificados do Tesouro Série 5, on 6 July, and it drew roughly €297.7 million from about 8,300 subscribers in its debut month, on IGCP figures. Yet the total stock still fell. Put the two figures together and the arithmetic implies that redemptions and maturities from the older Treasury series ran to something like €325 million over the same four weeks.

In other words, the new product is selling. It is simply not yet selling fast enough to replace what is walking out of the door from the series that came before it, most of which were written when rates were far lower and are now reaching the end of their terms. The debut month figure and the stock figure are not in conflict; they answer different questions, and both are worth watching over the next few months.

Why the state cares

Retail savers are now a meaningful funding channel for the Portuguese state rather than a rounding error. Households held about 15% of direct state debt in June, against roughly 10% a decade earlier, on IGCP numbers. That is a stable, domestically anchored source of money that does not reprice every time a rating agency clears its throat, which is a useful thing to have when borrowing costs are drifting upward across the euro area.

It is also a reminder of where Portuguese household wealth actually sits. Financial assets have doubled to €402 billion, but close to half of that remains parked in low-yield bank deposits. The €5.6 billion that moved into Aforro certificates over the past year is, in part, that money slowly waking up.

What this means for foreign residents

• You do not need to be Portuguese to buy them. Certificados de Aforro are open to anyone with a Portuguese NIF (tax number) and a domestic bank account, which includes most residents on any visa type. Subscriptions go through the AforroNet portal, a CTT post office counter or an Espaço Cidadão.
• Compare against your deposit rate before doing anything. At 2.474% for August subscriptions, the certificates beat most retail term deposits on offer in Portugal. If your savings are sitting in a current account earning nothing, that is a gap worth closing.
• The guarantee works differently from a bank's. Bank savings are covered by the Fundo de Garantia de Depósitos up to €100,000 per depositor per institution. State certificates are a direct claim on the Republic, with no cap, but also no deposit-insurance mechanism behind them. Different risk, not simply less of it.
• Aforro and Tesouro are not interchangeable. Aforro certificates pay a variable rate indexed to Euribor, can be redeemed after three months and have a €250,000 ceiling per holder. The Série 5 Treasury certificate pays a fixed, rising schedule to 3.35% in year ten and locks your money for the first year. If you may need the cash, that distinction matters more than the headline rate.
• Interest is taxed. Returns on both products are subject to the 28% withholding on investment income, deducted at source. Factor that into any comparison against a foreign savings account, particularly if a double-taxation treaty is in play.

The €50 billion mark is a round number rather than an economic event, but the composition behind it says something real. Portuguese savers have spent two years steadily moving money toward the one state product that reprices with interest rates, and away from the one that does not. Whether the new ten-year certificate can reverse that will be visible in the August data, when its second full month of subscriptions meets another round of maturing older series.