A recent survey, carried out by Santander and reported on by The International Business Times, has revealed that petrol in the UK is the seventh most expensive in the world.
It’s certainly a rather depressing statistic, but it may cheer you up (at least slightly) to know that there are other European countries paying more for their motoring.
Norway, for example, is the most expensive place in the world to buy petrol. It currently costs £1.52 per litre on average, over 25% more than it does in the UK.
People in The Netherlands, Italy and Denmark also pay more to fill their tanks than Brits, according to the figures.
Another interesting facet of the study is a calculation of how much the average monthly fuel bill works out to as a proportion of average disposable income. Based on a 37.8MPG car travelling 12,000 miles each year, the figure for an average British earner is 9%. In Italy this rises to 15%.
Moving to the edge of Europe, these comparisons become more extreme. In Turkey, petrol costs £1.39 per litre on average, but fuelling a car typically costs 39% of disposable income.
Across the top ten most expensive countries, only Switzerland does significantly better than the UK according to this metric. There, petrol is £1.17 per litre on average, and monthly disposable income is significantly higher too, making the cost of fuelling a car account for only 4% of it.
While nobody would reasonably deny that “rip off Britain” is a fair concept, it’s worth remembering that in several other countries, motoring takes up a far more significant share of monthly income.
IMAGE CREDIT: Wikipedia