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Slovaks Earn More Than 20 Years Ago, But With Big Regional Differences
Tuesday 17 November 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, November 17 (TASR) - Slovaks earn more in real terms than they did before the Velvet Revolution, but the differences between incomes in various Slovak regions are becoming bigger, said economists approached by TASR on Tuesday.
"Prices have risen by about 6.5 times over the past 20 years. If we expect that the average monthly salary will reach around €750 in 2009 ... this salary will be around 12 percent higher in real prices," said Vladimir Balaz from the Prognosis Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV).
Zdenek Lukas from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW) came up with similar figures. "Purchasing power expressed by gross domestic product per capita in Slovakia in 1990 only reached 40 percent of the average calculated for the EU27. This indicator should reach 67 percent in 2009," he told TASR.
In general, it is rather difficult to compare current living standards with those 20 years ago in an exact way. Many goods, even though they were cheap, weren't available to most people during the Communist era. "But there is also a difference in the quality of purchased goods. A TV set, for example, is much better quality now than it used to be, but is much cheaper. This also applies to cars, the range of services and so on," said Balaz.
When it comes to salary differences between Slovak regions, Volksbank chief analyst Vladimir Vano pointed to developments vis-a-vis Bratislava and Presov regions. In 1998, the average monthly salary in Bratislava region reached Sk13,022 (€432.25), while in Presov region it was Sk8,338 (€276.77), a difference of more than 50-percent. Ten years later, however, people in Bratislava region were earning an average of €943.50 per month, while their countrymen in Presov region received only €545.25, a 70-percent difference.
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