One family spent, on avarage, 400-1,000 litas (EUR 116-290) on food alone.
On Sunday morning, around fifty cars were parked outside Lidl supermarket in Suvalki. Forty of them sported Lithuanian licence plates, the Lietuvos rytas reports.
People interviewed claimed that only those living near the Lithuanian-Polish border - residents of Lazdijai - can afford to go to Poland to shop for under one hundred litas. Those coming from further afar spend up to a thousand.
The reasons that prompt residents of Kaunas, Marijampolė, Druskininkai, Vilnius, Ukmergė, etc., to go shopping in the neighbouring country include the continuous rise of prices in Lithuania, a much lower rate of value-added tax (VAT) levied on food in Poland and a decline in zloty’s exchange rate.
For example, Poland levies a 5 percent VAT rate on meat, milk and unprocessed foods, and an 8 percent rate on other products. Lithuania applies a uniform 21 percent VAT rate on all foods.
