Eurostat: Poles purchasing power at two-thirds of EU average

Eurostat released a purchasing power comparison of European nations' GDP per capita. The EU28 taken as the index baseline gives a measure of how well off each country's citizens are. Poland's GDP was 67 percent of the EU average, a percentage point higher than the year before. Countries that have the highest GDP are Luxembourg (257 percent), the Netherlands (131 percent) and Ireland (130 percent). Eastern European countries with the highest GDP include the Czech Republic (82 percent), Slovenia (82 percent), Slovakia (75 percent) and Lithuania and Estonia (both 73 percent). Countries that are worse off include Hungary (66 percent), Latvia (64 percent), Croatia (61 percent), Romania (55 percent) and Bulgaria (45 percent). Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) is a more telling method for comparing the wealth of individual households. AIC concerns goods and services actually consumed by consumers, regardless of whether it is bought by the household, the government or non-commercial institutions. Poland's AIC index was 75 in 2013 (EU28=100), reported ISBnews.