Singapore has been listed as the fourth most expensive city in the world for emigrants for the fourth time, according to the latest Cost of Living Survey by Mercer released on Wednesday.
Since 2013, Singapore is continuing to be at the fourth place although in 2012 Singapore was ranked sixth.
Hong Kong has overtaken Angola's Luanda to be the world's most expensive city in the survey. According to Mercer, Hong Kong's ascent to the top was a consequence of the decline of the local currency in Angola.
Constantin-Métral, the Principal at Mercer said that the strengthened rate of the Japanese yen has managed to push the Japanese cities up in the ranking and this time Tokyo escalated by six places, according to AFP reports. But on the other hand, Chinese cities dropped in the ranking due to the weakening of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar.
This year in March, Mercer conducted a survey and derived the figures for the cost of living and rental accommodation costs comparisons. The exchange rates from that time and Mercer's international basket of goods and services from its Cost of Living survey have been used as base measurements for this survey.
Mercer's list of top ten included five Asian countries ranked in the following order: Hong Kong (1st), Singapore (4th), Tokyo (5th), Shanghai (7th) and Beijing (10th). Other cities on the list were Luanda (2nd), Zurich (3rd), Kinshasa in Congo (6th), Zurich (8th) and N'Djamena in Chad (9th).
The survey included more than 375 cities across the globe. New York City has been used as the base city for all the survey comparisons and the currency movements were measured against the US dollar. In each location, the cost of more than 200 items was used for comparison. These items included housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods, entertainment and several others.
