Diesel has hit 98.50 denars: a Macedonian salary buys 503 litres, a Croatian one buys 950

28 July 2026 1 min read

Fuel prices went up again at midnight. Eurosuper BS-95 is now 93.00 denars a litre, BS-98 is 95.00 denars, and eurodiesel has reached 98.50 denars - up 4.50 denars in one go. Extra light household heating oil is 98.00 denars, five denars more per litre.

Diesel is now within reach of a hundred denars. A hundred denars for one litre of diesel, in a country where the average net wage is 49,544 denars.

That combination of numbers produces a calculation worth more than any analysis. One average Macedonian salary buys roughly 533 litres of petrol or around 503 litres of diesel. One average Croatian net salary, at 1,552 euros, buys around 1,000 litres of petrol or around 950 litres of diesel, because petrol there costs about 1.55 euros and diesel about 1.63 euros a litre.

The gap is about 467 litres of petrol and 447 litres of diesel. Same job, same car, same destination - the Croatian driver gets almost twice as far.

A full tank

Filling a 50-litre petrol tank in Macedonia costs 4,650 denars, which is 9.4 percent of the average wage. The same fill-up in Croatia costs around 78 euros, or 5.0 percent of the average wage there. So a Macedonian hands over nearly twice as large a share of monthly income for a single tank.

To hold that gap, Croatia has recently intervened by regulating prices and cutting levies. Here, the regulator's calculations are based on a longer window of average exchange prices, which is why the domestic price can climb even in moments when world markets are recording a temporary dip.

The effect of 4.50 denars per litre of diesel does not stop with the driver. A taxi driver burning 30 litres a day pays 135 denars more every single day. A farmer filling 200 litres for one cycle - 900 denars more. A haulier delivering food to a supermarket builds the same difference into his price.

From the Energy Regulatory Commission we have the decision. The question still without an answer is whether, alongside the pricing formula, there is any cushioning measure at all - or whether the only option left to the citizen is to drive less.