New Zealanders can buy more petrol on our salaries than most other countries - but our fuel is still far more expensive than the likes of Australia, Saudi Arabia and the US, a new map shows.
The research, compiled by Polish company Picodi, shows just how many litres of petrol people in each country can afford per wage cycle, based on the country's average wage and petrol prices.
A world petrol ranking map, based on data for the first six months of 2020, shows New Zealand's petrol affordability is well above Africa, South America, large swathes of Asia and much of Europe, but still a long way off the likes of Switzerland, Canada and Qatar.
Figures found that New Zealand has one of the best petrol price to average salary ratios in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, thanks to an average net wage of US$2794 (NZ$4523) and an average petrol price of US$1.34/L (NZ$2.17/L).
This means the average Kiwi is able to buy 2082 litres of petrol with their wages - more than citizens of other APAC members such as Singapore (2078L), Japan (2062L), South Korea (1955L) and China (1039L).
It also ranks us miles ahead of the likes of India (434L), Pakistan (351L), the Philippines (333L) and Cambodia (250L).
However New Zealand's petrol price to salary ratio is well behind Australia, whose citizens can buy an impressive 4288 litres of petrol on the average wage. Our trans-Tasman rivals are bolstered by both a higher average net wage (US$3551) and lower average price of petrol (US$0.83/L) than us.
Despite an average wage of just US$820, Malaysia also sits marginally ahead of New Zealand in the rankings (2135L), due to its bargain petrol price of US$0.38/L.
New Zealand sits third in the APAC rankings.
The best countries in the rest of the world to get affordable petrol are Canada (3179L), the US (5715L) and a cluster of countries in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates (5439L), Qatar (8081L) and Saudi Arabia (8210L).
At the other end of the scale, Cuba (219L), Tajikistan (151L) and Venezuela (148L) have the world's worst petrol affordability.
Another focus of Picodi's research was on the change in petrol prices in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period last year.
In most APAC countries, petrol prices fell - though New Zealand's price difference a year on was small at -4.9 percent compared to the likes of Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, which all saw double-digit drops.
Five of 16 APAC nations included in the research saw an increase in petrol prices - the highest of which was in Sri Lanka, where prices rose by 3.4 percent on the previous year.
