High living costs squeeze Bulgarians: “The market will be a jungle”

Bulgaria’s switch to the euro did not trigger the price explosion many Bulgarians feared. The European Commission estimates that euro adoption added about 0.2 percentage points to inflation, while the European Central Bank and Bulgarian National Bank put the effect at 0.3 to 0.4 points.

That absence of an immediate shock, however, does not make Bulgaria cheap. Numbeo data cited by the article puts the cost of living in Sofia just 1.2% below Warsaw’s, even though average wages in the Polish capital are more than 21% higher. Sofia’s lower overall cost is mainly linked to cheaper property and utilities. Housing in central Warsaw costs 31.2% more per square meter, and housing outside the center costs 19.7% more.

For many everyday goods, the comparison is less favorable to Bulgaria. Bulgarians pay more than Poles for petrol, cinema tickets, restaurant meals and mobile subscriptions. The gaps reach 36% for a restaurant meal and 138% for a phone plan. Average annual pay stands at 15,400 euros in Bulgaria, compared with 21,200 euros in Poland, according to the latest Eurostat data cited by the article.

Food prices underline the pressure. Groceries in Sofia are estimated to cost 10% more than in Warsaw, while earnings are 17% lower. Food in Plovdiv costs 2% more than in Krakow, where wages are 39.9% higher. In Varna, food costs 12.7% more than in Wroclaw, despite wages being 29.9% lower.

The differences include basic agricultural products and unprocessed food, even though these goods rely on Bulgaria’s domestic farming rather than Western European imports. Bulgarians pay more for eggs, potatoes, apples, yellow cheese, poultry, mineral water and milk, while onions, lettuce and cigarettes are cheaper. Yasen Georgiev, director of Sofia’s Institute for Economic Policy, attributed the high prices to structural economic imbalances, market dynamics and tax policy in the six-million-person economy. The article’s description also points to small-scale farming and a uniform VAT rate on food.

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The market will be a jungle.