Despite having the third cheapest beer in the world, Argentina is in the middle range for beer consumption and spending per capita

Argentina has the third cheapest beer in the world, but it seems relatively behind in beer consumption and spending. This is the result of the World Beer Index 2021, or World Beer Index 2021, a sort of ranking of prices, consumption and expenditure on beverages in 58 countries surveyed by Expensivity, a portal for consumption, business and finance.

The survey averaged the dollar price of 330 milliliter bottles of “well-known” international brands, such as Dutch Heineken and Mexican Corona, in supermarkets and chain hotel bars in capital cities or large cities. via phone surveys, online menu surveys and information from Numbeo, an international database founded by a former Google engineer

The price it took to prepare the classification comes, in turn, from the average costs in supermarkets and bars, which for Argentina resulted in a price of $ 1.79 per bottle, the third cheapest of the countries and cities considered, behind $ 1.68 per bottle. cost of the bottle in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, and three cents less than 1.76 USD in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The report converts all prices to dollars according to quotes from the exchange rate portal Xe.com, which for Argentina reports a ratio of 89.85 pesos per dollar, which is the official exchange rate.

The countries that round out the Top 10 for cheap are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Tunisia, Georgia, North Macedonia, Chile, and the Czech Republic, a beer country if there is any. In turn, the five most expensive beers are Qatar, Jordan, China, France and Switzerland, but for different reasons. In predominantly Muslim Qatar, the average price is no less than $ 11.26 a bottle. Sometimes the emirate applies a 100% rate on the importation of alcoholic beverages and those planning to go to the World Cup next year which (vaccines through) will be played there, should know that a permit special is needed to consume alcohol.

The average price in Qatar is USD 11.26 per bottle. The emirate applies a 100% tax on the importation of alcoholic beverages, and those planning to go to the FIFA World Cup next year must obtain a special permit to consume alcohol.

Beer is also expensive in China, according to the report, but that’s a skewed average, because while the bottle is extremely expensive in a hotel bar ($ 13.61), in a supermarket it costs an average of $ 1. $ 00 .81, barely two cents more than the value that puts Argentina on the podium for the cheapest beer. France and Switzerland are expensive, for beer and almost all products, due to the prices of the euro and the Swiss franc.

Price per quantity

Expensivity then took data on alcohol and beer consumption from World Health Organization reports and produced global maps of consumption, quantity (still in 330 milliliter bottles) and expenditure in beer per capita (in dollars).

In both cases, Argentina has moved away from extremes. With 235 bottles per capita, it was far behind the 468 of the Czechs, 417 of the Spaniards – which surprisingly outnumbered the Germans by 6 bottles – and also behind the 282 bottles of North America and the 277 of the average Brazilian.. Two neighboring countries with very different consumption levels are Haiti, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, with 4 bottles per year per capita, and Panama, with 375 bottles per year per capita, perhaps thanks to the both a sailor and a passing financier.

Finally, by combining consumption and price data, Expensivity calculated the annual per capita expenditure on beer, a ranking in which the countries of central and northern Europe stood out, led by Germany ($ 1,907 per capita and per year), Poland (USD 1,737), Lithuania (1,583) and Austria (1,553), closely followed by countries with a strong brewing culture such as Switzerland, Belgium and the Czech Republic. In the Western Hemisphere, the data for Argentina indicate an average of 419 USD of beer / year per capita, a figure probably influenced by the price collected in bars, but in any case far from the 1,338 USD of annual expenditure on beer. of a North American. and the 698 USD of an average Brazilian.

I continued to read: