At the same time, Romanians’ nominal per-capita purchasing power rose by nearly 12% compared with 2015.
The highest average purchasing power in Europe can be found in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Germany and Great Britain. Romania outranks Bulgaria and is outranked by Hungary, Turkey and Montenegro.
Bucharest inhabitants register the highest purchasing power, of EUR6,288 per capita, 50% more than the national average, placing Bucharest inhabitants on a similar position with Poland inhabitants (29th spot in European ranking).
Bucharest is followed by the counties of Timis, Cluj, Ilfov, Brasov, Constanta, Sibiu, Arad, Prahova and Arges, while Vaslui county is at the opposite pole, with a per-capita purchasing power of EUR3,054.
Europeans have around 0.3% more nominal purchasing power per person in 2016 compared to last year. The available net income of the population varies substantially among the 42 countries considered by the GfK study. The highest average purchasing power can be found in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Luxembourg, while the lowest is in Belarus, Moldova and the Ukraine.
According to the GfK study, a total of approximately EUR9.18 billion is available to European consumers in 2016 for spending and saving, corresponding to an average per-capita purchasing power of EUR13,672 for the 42 countries evaluated in the study, which is a nominal increase of approximately 0.3%.
The low growth in Europe’s average per-capita purchasing power is due to exchange rate effects and stagnating growth rates in some of the larger countries, among other factors.
Nonetheless, many countries have growth rates above 5%, including Iceland, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Malta, Slovakia, Luxembourg and Latvia.
Market research institute GfK has over 13,000 research experts providing studies in more than 100 countries.