The Cost of Lunch in Kyrgyzstan

Recently, I pondered the question of how much an average but reasonable lunch might cost in Kyrgyzstan. The obvious web searches for "lunch in Kyrgyzstan" and similar bad terms didn't lead to anything with much relevance, aside from some interesting pointers about the average fare of Kyrgyz cuisine from the all-knowing^[1] wikipedia.

Good answers to this question could likely be found from some people who have actually been to and/or live in Kyrgyzstan, and they could probably tailor the answer to exactly what my loaded definition of "reasonable lunch" might mean, further adjusted for what I can probably quickly adapt to eating and what might take a bit more getting-used-to.

Knowing the power of the whiff, I decided to derive the number from some highly manipulated international measures and some very badly applied ratios that might match up with what a friend of mine might have told me was the approximate lunch value to expect in Kyrgyzstan.

Here's the derivation, dollar amounts in USD, much in the style I see Wall Street calculate figures (IE very non-scientifically). Do us all a favor and please don't quote this in a journal as the approximate cost of lunches in Kyrgyzstan.

Given the current GDP (PPP) per capita in Kyrgyzstan is about $2000, and the US for the same measured period is $46,000, let's assume a simple flat ratio for a food price (wildly inaccurate, but I don't want to dig any further), and a fairly inexpensive lunch in the US (Northeast) is around $6:

$2000 / $46,000 = x / $6

So we're looking at lunch for about 26 cents (a bit higher than my friend's figure).

Since I can't remember what he said, let's assume (probably need an inverse logarithmic filter to account for general human perception) that "a bit higher" ≈ 40% premium

(100% + 40%)*x = $0.26, so

18.57 cents, so 19.

19 cents for a lunch in Kyrgyzstan. By very reputable^[2] derivation.

Update: I talked to the aforementioned friend. He said that a large lunch is about 20 Kyrgyzstan som; at current market rates (it seems to trade by appointment), 1 USD = 41.0 KGS (as of yesterday). So a more realistic number is about 50 cents. Just goes to show how far off you can get with some mathematical derivation ;)


^[1] This occasionally means not-all-knowing. YMMV.
^[2] This means non-reputable, if you were wondering.