According to the Annual Cost of Living Index compiled by Mercer, Angolan capital Luanda continues to be the most expensive city in the world, followed by Hong Kong, Zurich, Singapore and Geneva.
Mercer’s 21st annual Cost of Living Survey finds that factors including instability of housing markets and inflation for goods and services impacts significantly on the overall cost of doing business in a global environment.
“As the global economy has become increasingly interconnected, close to 75 percent of multinational organisations are expecting long-term expatriate assignments to remain stable or increase over the next two years to address business needs,” said Ilya Bonic, Senior Partner and President of Mercer’s Talent business. “Sending employees abroad is necessary to compete in markets and for critical talent, and employers need a reliable and accurate reflection of the cost to their bottom line.”
The costliest city for the third consecutive year is Luanda (1), the capital of Angola. Despite being recognised as a relatively inexpensive city, the cost of imported goods and safe living conditions in this country are available at a steep price.
Other cities appearing in the top 10 of Mercer’s costliest cities for expatriates are Shanghai (6), Beijing (7), and Seoul (8) in Asia; Bern (9); and N’Djamena (10).
The world’s least expensive cities for expatriates, according to Mercer’s survey, are Bishkek (207), Windhoek (206), and Karachi (205).
Mercer’s authoritative survey is one of the world’s most comprehensive, and is designed to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees. New York is used as the base city, and all cities are compared against it. Currency movements are measured against the US dollar.
The survey includes 207 cities across five continents and measures the comparative cost of more than 200 items in each location, including housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.
“Aligning workforce and mobility strategies by ensuring the right employees are in the right places is more critical than ever to manage globalisation,” said Mr. Bonic. “Properly compensating employees on international assignments is as important as it is costly.”
According to Mr. Bonic, this is especially important for emerging mobility programmes with smaller pools of candidates and higher business needs for sending employees on international assignments. It is essential that these organisations have accurate and transparent data as they consider how to compensate fairly and in line with market demands.
“Despite moderate price increases in most of the European cities, European currencies have weakened against the US dollar which has pushed most Western European cities down in the ranking,” Mercer said in a statement this week, further explaining that “additionally, other factors like the Eurozone’s economy, falling interest rates, and increasing unemployment have impacted these cities.”