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Is the meat in Saudi Arabia too expensive? We checked the prices!

PicodiAugust 29, 2023

Meat, which is a source of protein, fats and vitamins, is an important part of the diet for many people – an average Saudi consumes 55 kg of meat annually[1] or about 4.6 kg monthly. However, isn’t meat in Saudi Arabia too expensive?

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

Why chicken?

  1. Poultry is the most commonly eaten meat[2];
  2. Chicken is white meat, which is easier to digest and healthier.

Price of meat in MENA

Our ranking consists of 14 countries. It turns out that the continental average price of 1 kg of chicken fillet is $5.85 (around SAR 21.90).

The cheapest chicken meat can be found in Iran (SAR 10.91/kg), Iraq (SAR 14.43/kg) and Algeria (SAR 17.02/kg). On the other hand, citizens of Israel (SAR 37.65/kg), the UAE (SAR 28.55/kg) and Saudi Arabia (SAR 28.44/kg), have to pay the highest prices for their poultry.

In the chicken price ranking, Saudi Arabia ranked as the 12th country out of 14 countries included – in July 2023, the average price of 1 kg of chicken was SAR 28.44 ($7.58), 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 Saudi wage gets you 269 kg of chicken. This is more than in countries such as Bahrain (268 kg), Israel (254 kg) and Iraq (142 kg).

Click to see the entire ranking

No.CountryNumber of kilograms of chicken that can be bought with the average salary
1.Qatar569 kg
2.Kuwait522 kg
3.UAE476 kg
4.Oman431 kg
5.Saudi Arabia269 kg
6.Bahrain268 kg
7.Israel254 kg
9.Jordan116 kg
11.Morocco76 kg
12.Tunisia62 kg
13.Algeria60 kg
14.Egypt30 kg

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.

Other sources:

[1] https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=91992#

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

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