How much South Africans spend on petrol compared to the UK, Netherlands, USA and other countries

Although South African petrol prices are lower than in other countries, South Africans spend a larger proportion of their income on petrol compared to most other nations.

According to globalpetrolprices.com, South Africans currently pay R23.135 per litre of petrol – this number is calculated by averaging the inland price, R23.46, and coastal price, R22.81, for a litre of 95 unleaded in South Africa.

South African petrol prices thus rank 86 out of the 168 countries covered by globalpetrolprices.com.

All the provided figures are correct as of 7 December 2022.

The top fifteen countries with the highest fuel prices are (all prices were provided in Rands):

Notably, many countries that pay a significant amount for petrol – especially those in Europe – depend on Russian oil. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has devasted global energy supply chains, resulting in much higher fuel prices.

Africa has not been immune to this, either, with South Africa through to the Central African Republic, a net gasoline importer, paying more for petrol this year.

Norway, on the other hand, is a nation that is incredibly oil-rich but charges a significant amount for petrol. This is because the fuel in the Nordic country is highly taxed.

Moreover, the nation is highly invested in electric cars – four of five new vehicles bought are electric – and high fuel prices incentivise consumers away from petrol-fuelled vehicles.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong, Singapore and Monaco are all city-states that rely on refined fuel imports and thus pay a lot more for petrol.

Proportional spend

Although many countries spend more per litre of petrol, not all of them pay a greater part of their yearly earnings on fuel than South Africa.

Below is a table of the average annual earnings in OECD countries after tax (2021), converted to rands, and split across 365 days for the daily average:

South Africa is not an OECD nation, so we have taken the most recent data from the BankservAfrica Take-home Pay Index, which puts the average South African pay after tax at R15,063 a month or R502 a day.

This data will also present South Africa in a better light as the other countries mentioned in the table only have income stats from last year, which will be lower than this year as it has not been adjusted for inflation.

When expressed as a percentage of daily income, it’s clear that South Africa, despite having a relatively lower local fuel price, spends far more on petrol than most other OECD nations at 4.61% of daily income.

However, those in Turkey, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Mexico, the Slovak Republic and Poland do spend a larger proportion on their fuel than South Africans, with Turkey the highest at 12.12%.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the USA has the lowest proportional spend, at just 0.82%.

All conversions were done at the respective currency/ZAR exchange rates on 7 December 2022

Read: Here is the official petrol price for December