Albanians, the people who spend most on food in Europe

The animal that's not known is, my brother, the misery, the bite that's stuck on your throat and the sadness of” The Migen Woe poem, written in the '30s, seems to be actual today. Albanians, including Kosovo citizens, are the people who spend more on food in Europe, in relation to what their economy produces in one year.

The Monitor has processed data from the European Statistics Institute, Eurostat, which has updated the information on nominal food spending for 2017. According to these data, for Albania, nominal food spending constituted 31% of gross domestic production ( GDP- measuring the production of the economy in one year, or the revenues provided by labour and property. The data has included the last two years and Kosovo, where the indicator is slightly lower than in Albania to 29.2% of GDP. When non-alcoolitic beverages are calculated on this indicator, Kosovo goes first with 34.1% of GDP, while for Albania that indicator grows slightly to 31.9% of GDP.

Compared to the European Union average, food expenses in relation to what the economy produces in one year are much higher. For the EU average, this indicator is only 6% of GDP, where the highest is in Romania, with 15.8% of GDP and the lowest in Ireland and Luxembourg with 2.7 and 2.6% of GDP.

Even in relation to other countries in the region, Albanians of Albania and Kosovo use most of the money available to feed. For Serbia, this indicator is 15.6% of GDP and the highest is for Bosnia and Montenegro, with around 23-24% of GDP (see the graph respectively). For candidate and potential candidate countries (not including Kosovo and Turkey), the average is 19.7%.

In absolute value, each Albanian spends a year feeding 1,248 euros, from around 1800 euros that is average spending in the EU, but we must keep in mind that Albania's per capita income is only 30% of the European average!

In another more detailed index, published by Eurostat, the expenses for bread and cereal in Albania were the size of 4.9% of GDP, again the highest in Europe, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina with 3.1% of GDP (the data for Kosovo is missing).

High consumption of bread and flour is a sign of poverty and low income rates that provide a country that is obliged to buy expensive food, because a large portion of it is imported (Ironically, Albania has the highest weight of agriculture in Europe by about 18-20% of GDP from 2%, which is the average of Asia and Europe and about 8% of North Macedonia).

Only after caring for primary needs does a family begin to think about other expenses, where travel, luxury, and recreation are last places.

Eurostat data shows that not only Albanians spend more on making bread, but that percentage is higher than 10 years ago. In 2008, early year when reporting data I NSTAT, this percentage was 4.4, while the maximum level of 4.9% was scored in 2016. GDP, to drop slightly to 4.9% in 2017.

At absolute value, average expenses per resident for bread and cereal were 198 euros a year in 2017, the highest historical and the highest in the region. Developed countries spend more per capita on this product of absolute value because it is more expensive, but because of higher income, it does not weigh in their pockets. According to the method of purchasing power (where the average European Union is taken as reference to 1), Albania has this indicator of about 90, the highest in Europe/ Albanian.