Tirana, the capital of Albania, is the third most expensive place to live in the Western Balkans, after Budva and Belgrade, the Numbeo 2023 Cost of Living report has found.
The report takes a snapshot of daily costs across the world, creating an index of the most expensive cities to live in, to the cheapest.
Top of the list for 2023 is Basel, followed by Zurich, Lausanne, Zug, and Bern, all in Switzerland. The Norwegian cities of Oslo, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø in Norway completed the top 10. Others ranking high in Europe include Copenhagen in Denmark, Espoo in Finland, Dublin in Ireland, and Nice in France.
At the bottom of the list is war-torn Ukraine, with the besieged city of Kharkiv in last place. Other cheap places to live include the Ukrainian cities of Lviv, Odessa, Dnipro and Kyiv.
In terms of the Western Balkans, Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, is one of the cheapest places to live in Europe, along with Nis, Serbia, Craiova, Romania and Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Belgrade is the most expensive city in the region, followed by Budva, Montenegro, and Tirana, Albania.The cost of living in Belgrade is at 42.5% of that of New York, while Tirana fared at 41% – a 3.7-point increase from the previous year.
While Tirana ranks as cheap across Europe, it is expensive for locals. Rising costs and runaway inflation have plunged thousands to the brink of poverty. Currently, half of the population is either in poverty or at risk of falling into it.
Data from the Albanian national statistics agency INSTAT reported that in 2021-2022, 12.6% of Albanians in employment are also at risk of falling into poverty. Among unemployed people, the risk of poverty is higher and reaches 39%; among pensioners, it is lower at around 14%.
The United Nations’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), estimated that in 2020, in Albania, 12% of all employees received wages below the relative poverty line of $5 per day. According to ILO calculations,12% of employees in our country receive a maximum monthly salary of €150.
Currently, the monthly minimum wage is set at €289.72, while the average across the whole country is around €450. But the numbers are difficult to pin down as many work in the informal sector, estimated to represent almost 40% of the workforce.
(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)
Source: euractiv.com
