Budapest is the cheapest city in Central-Europe

The Swiss UBS bank created a database in which it collected typical prices and salaries from 77 big cities of the world. Using this, index.hu compared the data of the neighbouring and Western-European big cities to Budapest. As we already reported, many people leave Hungary because of the higher wages in Western-European countries. But does money really grow on trees there? According to index.hu’s findings, compared to its neighbours, wages are not too high in Hungary, but at least prices are wallet-friendly.

In Hungary, people have to work 49.9 days for a new iPhoneX

Based on the data of UBS, one has to work 4.7 days in Zürich to buy the newest iPhoneX. In contrast, this time is 4 months (133.3 days) in Cairo. In fact, Hungary is halfway between the two ends of the list with 49.9 days. However,

in the Central-European region, Hungary is the last one with this result.

People living in Bucharest (Romania) have to work 49.5 days for the newest Apple mobile while this number is 40 in Zagreb (Croatia) while 35 in Prague (the Czech Republic) and, in Warsaw (Poland). However, provided that somebody would like to collect the price of a new iPhoneX in Berlin, Dublin or London they only have to work 11 days or even less in Vienna.

Furthermore, index.hu chose seven professions – cook, nurse, general practitioner, bus driver, construction worker, shop assistant and primary school teacher – affected significantly by labour shortage and compared their salaries. According to UBS’s data, only cooks working in Prague get less money than their colleagues in Budapest. In every other case, wages are the lowest in the Hungarian capital. However, there are no considerable differences in the region in wages. This means that in Western-Europe Hungarian bus drivers and nurses compete with their colleagues from Bratislava, Prague and Bucharest. According to UBS,

a nurse gets 5.7 times more in the Irish and 4.4 times more in the British capital than in Budapest.

The biggest difference is in the salaries of general practitioners. According to UBS’s data, a general practitioner gets 13,780 dollars in Budapest on a yearly basis while in Dublin his or her salary is seven times more. Moreover, this sum is 8.5 times more in London, 10 times more in Berlin and 15 times more in Vienna.

Cost of living is low

Of course, life is more expensive in Western-European cities than in Budapest. UBS collected the price of many goods and services like clothes, electronic gadgets, food and public transport. According to their findings,

Budapest is the cheapest city in Central-Europe

even though it was the most expensive in 2015. Now, the most expensive cities of the region are Ljubljana (Slovenia), Prague and, Bratislava.

In detail, to maintain a newly built flat with two or three bedrooms is 4 times more expensive in Paris, 3.7 times more expensive in London and 1.5 times more expensive in Vienna and Berlin than in Budapest where it costs only 693 dollars.

However, providing food for a family of three is much more expensive in Budapest than in any of the neighbouring countries. According to UBS, this expenditure is 305 dollars in Budapest every month, and this sum is only higher in Ljubljana. In Warsaw; however, this is 255 dollars, in Bucharest 214 dollars while in London 388 dollars, in Vienna and Paris 420 and, in Copenhagen 500 dollars.

Source: index.hu