According to an extensive annual study of prices released on Tuesday (March 21), Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi are among the top ten cheapest cities in the world.
Read: Delhi, Mumbai Among Top 5 World's Cheapest Cities
The Economist Intelligence Unit's Worldwide Cost of Living Survey analysed more than 150 purchases in 133 cities across the world to put together the list.
The survey concluded that some of the cheapest cities to live were in Asia, especially South Asia. The report pointed out that most of these places had "well-documented economic, political, security and infrastructural challenges."
Here are the top ten cheapest cities with the ranksd:
- lmaty, Kazakhstan--133
- Lagos, Nigeria-- 132
- Bangalore, India-- 131
- Karachi, Pakistan-- 130
- Algiers, Algeria-- 127
- Chennai, India-- 127
- Mumbai, India-- 127
- Kiev, Ukraine-- 124
- Bucharest, Romania-- 124
- New Delhi, India-- 124
According to CNBC reports, Simon Baptist, regional director for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the exchange rate, government policies and commodity prices are the three key drivers of cost of living in these countries.
"We're expecting, over the course of this year, the rupee, the yen and the euro to all have a fairly good year. That's going to up the cost of living in those cities. On the other hand, currencies we think are going to struggle — including those in Brazil, South Africa, (South) Korea, Indonesia and China — those places we expect the cost of living is going to come down," said Baptist.
He also emphasised on how India's demonitisation has led to sharp drop in inflation, but as the effect of demonitisation would wither, inflation will rise again. He feels that government's infrastructure spending can have a positive effect on the food prices.
"Something that could make a big difference in India actually is the improvement that seems not be happening in food chain management — so say better refrigeration, improvement in electricity supply and refrigerated transport mean food prices should, over the next few years, become a bit less sensitive to fluctuations in the weather," he added.
Surprisingly, five of the top ten expensive cities listed belong to Asia. While Singapore tops the list, Tokyo and Osaka of Japan sit in the fourth and fifth spot.
London suffred a fall from the 6th position to 24th in the light of Brexit.
Here's the list of the top ten expensive cities:
- Singapore-- 1
- Hong Kong-- 2
- Zurich, Switzerland-- 3
- Tokyo, Japan-- 4
- Osaka, Japan-- 5
- Seoul, South Korea-- 6
- Geneva, Switzerland-- 7
- Paris, France-- 7
- New York, United States-- 9
- Copenhagen, Denmark-- 9
