The interest rate of the booklet has too low? This will not be well arranged on August 1, 2025

The yield of the favorite savings product of the French does not protect them from inflation, according to a parliamentary report on the remuneration of popular savings and the middle classes published on May 14. And the interest rate of booklet A will further drop on August 1 …

• 
  

  To safeguard
  

  
  
  

  Saved
  

THE Livret A : a risk -free savings product, tax exemption and on which you can withdraw your money at any time. But a product that does not report enough, according to the information report on the remuneration of popular savings and the middle classes deposited in the National Assembly by deputies Jean-Philippe Tanguy (RN) and François Jolivet (Horizons), Wednesday, May 14. “Never have the French spared so rarely savings have reportedly reported”deplore the two elected officials.

Because despite an interest rate set for 2.4% since February 1much higher than the inflation observed during this period – 0.7% excluding tobacco -, the booklet A is far from constituting a sustainable rampart in the face of the rise in prices, its real yield (gross – inflation rate) appearing in the red in the long term. “According to the Banque de France, the real yield of booklet A has been systematically negative since 2016, and mediocre before, oscillating between 0 and 2%”underlines the report.

A unique booklet that would merge Livret A and LEP?

However, it is precisely an interest rate of less than 2% that should find the booklet A from August 1. The final statistics on April inflation published this Thursday, May 15 by INSEE reports an increase in prices excluding tobacco at 0.8%. Thus, the average annual inflation will undoubtedly be less than 1% between the months of January and June 2025, while interbank rates – those to which banks exchange money – will reach 2.46% at best during this period. Since the interest rate of booklet A corresponds to the average of these two criteria, the 56 million holders of this savings product can therefore expect to see their remuneration drop from 2.4% to 1.7% This summer.

A dive of the remuneration of the booklet A which could cause a real desertion of savers. “A continuation of the decrease in the rate of the booklet A could lead 6 out of 10 French people to no longer feed it or close it and 4 out of 10 holders may abandon the booklet to if the yield drops to 1.75%”warn Jean-Philippe Tanguy and François Jolivet. To avoid this cataclysm and better protect the purchasing power of the French, they recommend merging booklet A and the popular savings book (THE P) intended for modest income households and whose yield is systematically higher. “The first 10,000 euros of this new merged booklet (the current LEP ceiling, editor’s note) would be guaranteed of remuneration equal to inflation, the higher sums being for their part applying a rate corresponding to the current formula of booklet A. This solution would have the advantage of covering all the beneficiaries with significant gains for the purchasing power of popular and medium classes”they advance.

If the creation of this merged savings book would therefore allow current holders of a LEP booklet to obtain, in the long term, better remuneration for their savings, this proposal must also collect government favors. This is far from obvious: Bercy as much as the governor of the Banque de France, François Villeroy de Galhau, have not given any boost to the interest rate of the booklet to recent years.