Surplus Agent

A surplus agent is an economic agent who does not make a total consumption of his income. In other words, your money inflows exceed your expenses, producing a surplus. This allows you to make investment or saving decisions for your funds.

In other words, a surplus agent is one who earns more than he spends. In this way, you are able to save a surplus that you can invest or save.

It should be noted that economic agents or economic units are those individuals or institutions that carry out business or activities related to them. In addition, they can belong to the public or private sector, being families, companies and State entities.

As a consequence of their decisions, economic agents can acquire the role of surpluses. For example, if the government spends less than it collects from taxes.

The main characteristic of a surplus agent is the achievement of certain levels of savings. This, as a consequence of the fact that he has decided not to consume all the income received, thinking of raising capital for the future.

Often times, the savings produced by surplus agents are offered or loaned to the markets seeking greater future benefits or returns through investment. In this way, their role in the system is complemented by that of deficit agents who seek financing to meet their obligations and commitments.

Countries as surplus agents

Surplus agents can also be countries or governments. Here, we explain three situations in which this happens:

• Fiscal or public surplus: A state administration can count on a public surplus when it collects much more than it needs. So you become a surplus agent.
• Trade surplus: It refers to the surplus that a territory obtains from transactions of goods and services abroad. The surplus agent will then be the country that exports more than it imports. This is reflected in the trade balance.
• Foreign surplus. In this case, the surplus agent would be a country, when the inflows of money from abroad are greater than the outflows or payments abroad. This is not only the result of exports and imports (trade balance), but also of capital movements, for example, through remittance transfers.