Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 2: A recent study on cities worldwide found that New York and Singapore have the highest overall cost of living. According to the annual Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey, New York and Singapore have been ranked as the world’s most expensive cities in 2022 amid soaring energy prices and inflation across major cities.
The survey revealed that ‘the soaring cost of living in the world’s biggest cities as the war in Ukraine and continuing pandemic restrictions disrupt supply chains, particularly for energy and food’.
It is the first time New York has topped the rankings. Singapore was the equal-second most expensive city in 2021 and has been No 1 in eight of the past 10 years. While Sydney snuck into the Top 10 and Moscow and St Petersburg rose through the rankings by 88 and 70 places, to 37th and 73rd place respectively, partly as a result of Western sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Tel Aviv, which had previously held the number one spot in these rankings, fell to the number three spot, above Hong Kong and Los Angeles, which rounded out the top five most expensive cities. Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, with its 132 per cent price increase in 2022, was well down on the 2019 hyperinflation rate of more than 25,000 per cent but remained too high to be included in the survey.
Upasana Dutt, who headed the research, said ‘the war in Ukraine, Western sanctions on Russia and China’s zero-Covid policies have caused supply-chain problems that, combined with rising interest rates and exchange-rate shifts, have resulted in a cost-of-living crisis across the world.’
Apart from gas prices and inflation rates, a stronger currency has been one of the factor driving cities up the rankings. The US cities, led by Atlanta, went from 42nd to 46th in the rankings of the 172 cities surveyed.
