While Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have emerged as the most expensive Indian cities, their global rankings are quite encouraging considering the significance of these three cities. According to the Worldwide Cost of Living survey 2010 conducted by Mercer, New Delhi is ranked 85, Mumbai is 89th while Bangalore is further down at 190.
The survey covers more than 200 cities globally and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in every location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. It is the world’s most comprehensive cost of living survey and is used to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowance for their expatriate employees.
New York is used as the base city for the index and all cities are compared against New York. Currency movements are measured against the US dollar. The cost of housing – often the biggest expense for expats - plays an important part in determining where cities are ranked.
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For the first time, the ranking of the world’s top 10 most expensive cities includes three African urban centres: Luanda (1) in Angola, Ndjamena (3) in Chad and Libreville (7) in Gabon. The top ten also includes three Asian cities; Tokyo (2), Osaka (6) and Hong Kong (jointly ranked 8). Moscow (4), Geneva (5) and Zurich (joint 8) are the most expensive European cities, followed by Copenhagen (10).
According to Nathalie Constantin-Métral, a Senior Researcher at Mercer with responsibility for compiling the ranking each year, "In the past couple of years, corporate assignments have become truly global, with expatriates and ‘global assignees’ being transferred across all parts of the world. However, global mobility is still an expensive undertaking for companies, so selection of the right candidates and a real understanding of the costs involved in relocating staff to other countries are essential - especially in today’s economic environment."
"Our cities are selected based on requests from our multinational clients," she continued, "Notably African cities now figure prominently reflecting the growing economic importance of the region to global companies across all business sectors."
And just if you wanted to know which was the cheapest city in the World. It is Karachi!
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