Is food in Hungary three times more expensive than in the UK?
Have you ever been curious about what food costs in different countries? What could people buy in different countries for about the same sum of money?
Thanks to G7, you can picture the price differences between Hungary and the United Kingdom. The Hungarian news site has been making comparisons of prices of different essential food products between stores and countries for some time now. Still, with the comparison of Hungary and the UK, they have found some surprising differences.
To conduct the comparison – keep in mind, it is not a representative comparison –, G7 asked one of their readers, Péter, who lives in the United Kingdom, to check the prices of a few essential food products in an Aldi store.
Hungary vs the United Kingdom
The staff of G7 have been surprised by the prices quite a few times.
The most shocking numbers were the price of the spaghetti pasta made from durum wheat and the price per kilogram of grade “A” rice. The former was well over three times as much in Hungary, and the latter costs almost twice as much in Hungary.
According to Hvg, the news site had to change a few things to accommodate to differences between Hungary and the United Kingdom. Previously, they had been inspecting the price of 42 essential products in the Hungarian Aldi and Lidl, and recently in Penny and Tesco.
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Their usual price comparison aims to try and show inflation and deflation through the cost of an average family’s shopping in Hungary.
To accommodate the data, they had to drop and change a few items. In Hungary, for example, people buy ground coffee more often, but it is not that widely available in Aldi stores in the UK. They could only find sliced Gouda cheese. They also used the price of toast bread in the UK compared to the regular Hungarian bread, assuming shopping differences.
Conclusion
According to their findings, 14 products, including pasta, flour, potatoes, and carrots, are cheaper in the UK than in Hungary. Moreover, some of them were significantly cheaper.
Even though many items are cheaper, the total price of the shopping is a bit more expensive in the UK, approximately € 36.83, while this number is € 33.02 in Hungary.
According to G7, if we consider the median wages of both countries, we get a more shocking difference. The median wage in Hungary is around 210,000 forints, or roughly € 583.33. In the UK, it is approximately 2,000 pounds, which is over € 2,311.11.
Comparing these wages to the price of a shopping, it turns out that while it takes about 5.6% of the Hungarian median wage, it is only 1.6% of the median salary of the United Kingdom.
G7 found that one factor that could cause this difference is VAT. The UK has a different tax policy, and hence, there is negligible VAT on many food products.
Read alsoAldi announced a major change in Hungarian stores
Source: G7.hu, Hvg.hu
What is often overlooked in that most food things in the UK supermarkets are zero rated for VAT (Áfa) but have 27% VAT here.
The cost for rent or buy an apartment is a lot more fewer in Hungary than in UK. Moreover, the cost for restaurants and services are a lot more fewer in Hungary than almost the rest of all Europe too.
Very PREVALENT point – Frequent Shopper.
Hungary – the VAT we are asked to pay 27% and concerns the direction of our “struggling” and “weakening” economy is heading, that the 27% will be Increased.
The VAT leval of 27% is a “revenue” earner for our Government.
The trend or mood – of our Economy – rising Inflation – rising Interest Rates, continueing Weakening of the Forint, examples – would not be at all surprised to see the VAT percentage increased.
CHALLENGING times we live and going forward – SADLY.
Celso probably does not know how much the average Hungarian earns per month.
Alot of comments are talking about VAT being 27% in Hungary. This is true for base VAT but in the last 2 years the government changed the VAT syatem to create exceptions for certain critical products. Food purchased in shops have a 10% VAT rate while food purchased to eat at restaurants have a 5% VAT rate. An interesting nate can be made for restaurants where there are two different prices for food eaten at the restaurant and food taken away from the restaurant, as for food eaten there the 5% VAT applies, but for food taken away the 10% VAT applies. That being said the idea of the 27% VAT has become a boogyman idea and most Hungarians still think that its the rate they’re paying for most products even though its not.
If we stick to supermarkets and shops like a butchers, grocers etc, most food in the UK is ZERO vat. This cheap 15% income tax we have here is made up for by consumers taxes. Not rocket science.
The discussion is about shopping at supermakets. You are mixing and matching vat across a range of things.