No, I didn’t eat at McDonald’s today; since I have seen Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock, I have never been to this fast food chain again. And there are plenty other fast food restaurants available in South Africa: for example ANAT, Fontana, KFC, Steers, Wimpy and of course many more.
This post is about the Big Mac Index, or generally about prices here in South Africa. To start with, a Big Mac costs 16.95 R (Rand) which is at the current currency rate (7.20 R = 1 CHF) about CHF 2.35 (Swiss Franks); in Switzerland the same item costs CHF 6.50 (about 2.75 times more than in South Africa). Food in general is quite cheap here, not surprising if you think about the fact that also a gardener which earns about 30 R (CHF 4.15) per day needs to be able to buy food. It is quite normal here to eat lunch for between 25 and 40 R (CHF 3.50 - 5.50). Even in the more expensive restaurants the prices are still about the same as you pay in any normal restaurant in Switzerland.
Quite interesting is that products, which are also available in Europe, are still much less expensive here. And that even thought the VAT (MwSt) is 14% for everything except some basic food items (no VAT) - compared to the 7.6% (2.4% for food).
Some might now think that this is due to the different levels of quality, but this is only the half truth: meat has about the same quality and of course al the “western” items too. Well not all: as a non representative example I take the Tic Tacs: while the Swiss Tic Tacs are made in France, the South African come from Ecuador and have a totally different taste.
As a last word I would like to mention that a software engineer’s salary here is about the half of what it is in Switzerland.
1 response so far ↓
1 UncleSam // Oct 25, 2008 at 1:47
Update as of October 25:
Due to the financial crisis (which didn’t yet hit South Africa), the Rand was on Wednesday (Oct. 22) at over 10 R/CHF and has now come down to about 9.5 R/CHF.