Retail gasoline prices by country

World oil prices continue to fall, and the price of gasoline too, but gasoline prices are differs across countries by a huge amounts. Some countries subsidize gasoline, others, on opposite, have significant tax burden. Most expensive gasoline (in nominal USD terms) is in the Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Hong Kong - about 1.86 USD per liter as of 12 Jan 2015. And the cheapest one is in the Venezuela, whose citizens drive their cars almost for free (only 2 cents per liter). But what is "expensive" and "cheap"? Incomes of people by country differs too. And if to bring gasoline prices to a common denominator taking income levels into account, the picture changes. Thus, in United States monthly GDP per capita equals about 7120 liters of gasoline and in Iran, for example, where nominal USD price is "cheap" (0.26$/l.) for 1 monthly GDP per capita you could buy 4.4 times less gasoline - only 1621 liter. Europe citizens, on average, can buy about 2-3 times less gasoline for their incomes than residents of US. And the poorest (in terms of gasoline purchasing power) - some African countries (their citizens gasoline purchasing power more than 300 times less than US, as shown on the map and ranking gadget).

The year of commodities fallen

Last year not only prices of oil have fallen, but also for other commodities. For example, iron ore & rubber prices decreased more than 30%, Coal, Soybeans, Rapeseed & Palm oil about 20-25%. Common reasons that explain the fall of commodity prices include the rise of the USD (due to rising interest rate expectations), the economic slowdown in China, cost cuts induced by a fall in fuel price. But some foods, like beef, chicken meat and coffee showed significant uptrend. Also, some grain prices were rising, especially by the end of the year. Apparently, commodity markets are influenced by their own factors (such as harvest, shipping and warehousing situation, local export bans or changes in taxation etc.) and not only macroeconomic ones.

Explore the last and historical trends in various world commodity prices with Knoema viz gadgets and newly updated World Bank Commodity Price Dataset.