In Romania you can buy almost nothing with a leu. Journalists from Prahova did a small experiment to see what else can be purchased with 1 leu in 2024.
After the recent price increases, the products that Romanians buy for 1 leu can be counted on the fingers, and that also depends on the city where you live.
Journalists went shopping in Hale Centrale in Ploiești. The cheapest product, when it comes to pastries, is the plain bagel. It is sold there for the price of 0.40 lei.
However, the Brașov pretzel costs 1.5 lei, and the price even rises to 4 lei, if it is a pretzel with olives or apricot jam. By comparison, in Bucharest, the cheapest pretzel costs 1.5 lei.
Also, in the same place, for 1 leu you can buy a bunch of parsley or a bunch of dill. In the Capital, for the same green connection, you pay twice as much.
During Ceaușescu's time, the cheapest product was Eugenia. The price of this product increased from 0.25 bani to 0.45, and in 2024 it ended up costing 1.49-1.8 lei, according to observatorulprahovean.ro.
Eugenia was one of the few cheap sweets to be found in communist shops. The story of the Eugenia brand was born in Constanța, during the Second World War. The product consisting of two biscuits with rum cream inside was manufactured in a small enterprise operating on Theodor Burada Street.
Eugenia, a cheap sweet Archive
Since 1961, Eugenia has been manufactured at the Dobrogea Milling and Baking Company in Palas. The product contained only natural products: flour, cream, ground almonds, powdered sugar, lemon peel, butter, egg yolks and vanilla sugar. The cream was made from butter, sugar, cocoa, milk and rum essence. A Eugenia biscuit costs less than one leu.
