Mumbai city most expensive for expats: Mercer survey

By Realty Quarter Bureau

Mumbai is the most expensive city for expatriates in India, according to a global consulting firm’s Cost of Living Survey, released on June 26, 2018, with Hong Kong topping the list as the world’s costliest city to live. Mumbai has moved up two spots and is listed 55th, higher than cities like Melbourne (58), Frankfurt (68), Buenos Aires (76), Stockholm (89) and Atlanta (95). New Delhi is ranked 103, Bengaluru is at number 170, Chennai at 144 and Kolkata stands at 182, according to the 2018 Cost of Living Survey by Mercer, a New York-based global consulting leader in advancing health, wealth and careers.

“While cities such as Melbourne and Buenos Aires have fallen in their rankings, Mumbai’s jump in ranking is also attributable to continued surge in the prices of food, alcohol and domestic supplies,” it said. “Costs of sporting and leisure-related activities have also played a role in rising prices, followed in part by transportation costs, which includes taxi fares and cost of registration and road taxes. Real estate prices in Mumbai remain among the highest in the world for residential purposes,” the survey noted.

The 2018 survey ranked 209 cities across five continents, measuring the comparative cost of more than 200 items in each location, including housing, transportation food and clothing. Hong Kong leads as the world’s costliest city to live in, surpassing Angola’s capital Luanda, which came sixth. Only two European cities, Zurich (3) and Bern (10) are among the top 10 list of most expensive cities. Asian financial hubs dominate the list with Tokyo figuring at second place, Singapore at fourth, Seoul at fifth, Shanghai at seventh and Beijing at ninth place.

Outside of Asia, European and African cities were among the priciest cities for employees.

Mercer’s widely-recognised survey is one of the world’s most comprehensive and is designed to help multi-national companies and governments determine compensation strategies, for their expatriate employees. For this survey of global rankings, New York City is used as the base city for all comparisons, and currency movements are measured against the US dollar.