Is the meat in the UAE too expensive? We checked the prices!

Meat, which is a source of protein, fats and vitamins, is an important part of the diet for many people. However, isn’t meat in the UAE too expensive?

We decided to compare the prices of 1 kg of chicken fillet around the continent.

Our ranking consists of 14 countries. It turns out that the continental average price of 1 kg of chicken fillet is $5.85 (around AED 21.50).

The cheapest chicken meat can be found in Iran ($2.91/kg), Iraq ($3.85/kg) and Algeria ($4.54/kg). On the other hand, citizens of Israel ($10.03/kg), the UAE ($7.61/kg) and Saudi Arabia ($7.58/kg), have to pay the highest prices for their poultry.

In the chicken price ranking, the UAE ranked as the 13^th country out of 14 countries included – in July 2023, the average price of 1 kg of chicken was AED 27.94 ($7.61), over the MENA average.

Comparison of meat prices with wages

In order to make the comparison more fair, we calculated how many kilograms of chicken can be bought with the average wage in each country.

The best relation between meat prices and wages can be found in Qatar, where the average wage (QAR 15,055!) can get you 569 kg of chicken breast. Slightly less fits in the Kuwaiti (522 kg) and Emirati (476 kg) average wage.

The average Emirati wage gets you 476 kg of chicken. This is more than in countries such as Oman (431 kg), Saudi Arabia (269 kg) and Bahrain (268 kg).

Prices in Emirati online supermarkets

Chicken fillets in Carrefour: AED 49.35/kg

Ajman, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

To the store

Chicken fillets in LuLu: AED 57.00/kg

All Emirates.

To the store

Chicken fillets in Noon: AED 60.00/kg

Dubai, Abu Ghabi, Sharjah, Ajman and Umm Al Quwairi.

To the store

Methodology and sources

Prices of 1 kg of chicken breast, as well as the average wages in different MENA countries, are from numbeo.com, a platform where hundreds of thousands of users from around the world monitor prices of products and services. For currency conversion, we used the average exchange rate data from Google Finance for July 2023. Prices in Emirati online supermarkets as of 02.08.2023.

Other sources:

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274522/global-per-capita-consumption-of-meat/

Read also:

We juxtaposed the data from 105 countries worldwide