The same product is up to 63 percent cheaper in the Romanian store than here

“During the investigation, we established the prices of the Romanian Lidl on the basis of the latest price list of January 27. Since we did not find such publicly available information at the Hungarian Lidl, an arbitrarily selected Lidl – in the Budapest agglomeration, about 10 kilometers from the capital – store shelf prices were used as a basis for recording Hungarian prices. This is not the first time our paper has conducted a similar sample showing current conditions: last December, we compared the prices of the Polish Lidl with domestic prices. It is no coincidence that Lidl is the subject of these comparisons, as it acquired them in 2020, 2021 and retained the market-leading position in the domestic FMCG sector, i.e. in the daily consumer goods sector, with a gross turnover of nearly 1,000 billion”

– writes the paper.

The first element of the investigation is red potatoes, whose kilo was priced at 2.29 lei by the Romanian Lidl. Calculated at an exchange rate of HUF 80, this is about HUF 184. On the other hand, one kilogram of red potatoes cost HUF 299.5 in the selected Lidl store. The difference is 63 percent, which is astonishing without exaggeration.

There is also a considerable difference between the price of bananas in Romania and in Hungary. A kilogram of bananas in the Romanian Lidl costs 6.99 lei, or HUF 559. In the Hungarian Lidl, they charge HUF 699 for the same reason, which is 25 percent more. Global products like Coca Cola are also more expensive at home. The 2.5 liter package costs 8.49 lei, 715 forints in Romania. In the Hungarian Lidl store, there was a two-liter bottle of Coca Cola for HUF 609. The price per liter is therefore HUF 304.5, compared to HUF 286 in Romania. In the category of alcoholic beverages, we found Argus Strong 0.5 liter canned beer here at a price of 269 forints, but there it is sold for 2.49 lei, i.e. 199 forints.