Dubai: Do you feel like the price of petrol is draining your wallet? If a new research were to be believed, filling up the tank in the UAE is not as costly as you think.
According to a research by Carmudi, an online car platform, many people in the country earn more than their peers in other markets, around $170 daily. Considering that, coupled with low oil prices, it takes only .28 per cent of the estimated average daily earnings to buy a single litre of petrol.
The situation is the same in Qatar, where a litre of petrol is estimated to cost only 0.07 per cent of the average daily income. In Saudi Arabia, the largest oil producer, most residents spend only 0.10 per cent of their day’s earnings on a litre of oil.
“Fuel prices in the oil-wealthy Middle East are incredibly low, and that, coupled with the high average daily income, makes it the best place to own a gas guzzler,” Carmudi said.
Consumers in other countries, where incomes are low and oil does not run in abundance, are not as lucky.
Residents in Congo, where petrol pump prices top the charts at $1.51 a litre, need to spend all of their average daily income - and probably borrow extra money - to be able to buy a litre of petrol.
According to Carmudi’s analysis, a little over 112 per cent of the average daily income in Congo is needed to purchase a litre of oil, with the average resident earning only about $1.34 a day.
In Sri Lanka, consumers have to shell out nearly half of their daily earnings (almost 45 per cent) to fill their cars with one litre of oil, which costs $0.96, the ninth most expensive in the world.
Although the price of petrol in Indonesia is the fifth cheapest globally, the situation there is nearly as bad because, with low household incomes, consumers spend more than 30 per cent of their daily earnings to be able to afford a litre of petrol.
Carmudi came up with the findings after reviewing the oil prices in the second quarter of the year and the 2014 average income data compiled from various sources, including Credit Agricole, Trading Economics, Nigeria National Bureau Statistics, Philippine Bureau of Labour and Employment Statistics, The Pan African Bank, Global Petrol Prices and World Vision. The 2014 income data were used for all countries, except Vietnam (2015) and Sri Lanka (GDP per capita).
Alp Eke, senior economist at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi said that while the price of gas in the UAE is low compared to other countries outside the Middle East, it is actually the highest in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
“The price of gas per litre at the pump in UAE is around $0.47, in comparison to the rest of the world, it is quite low. In the GCC, it is the highest,” Eke told Gulf News earlier.
Below is the list of countries and the percentage of average daily income needed to buy a single litre of petrol:
1. Congo- 112.69%
2. Rwanda- 75.48%
3.Tanzania-59.49%
4. Senegal- 45.96%
5. Sri Lanka- 43.84%
6. Cameroon-37.12%
7. Myanmar- 34.87%
8. Ivory Coast- 34.50%
9. Indonesia- 34.13%
10. Vietnam- 27.98%
11. Pakistan- 21.35%%
12. Ghana- 16.72%
13. Philippines-14.37%
14. Mexico- 7.84%
15. Nigeria- 5.6%
16. Bangladesh- 5.32%
17. UAE- 0.28%
18. Saudi Arabia- 0.10%
19. Qatar- 0.07%
