Favorite Thing: Ukraine’s capital ranks as one of the 50 most expensive places to live in the world, coming in 21st on a list of 144 cities surveyed by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, a global leader for human resources and related financial advice.
In Mercer’s annual Worldwide Cost of Living survey from 2006, Kyiv has moved up from 54th to 21st place compared with the survey from 2005, sharing its position with Rome and Vienna.
With a score of 89.8, Kyiv is just around 10 points away from New York, which represented the survey’s base city at 100 points. The Ukrainian capital was separated by just a little over 30 points from Moscow, which this year replaced Tokyo as the world’s most expensive city, with a score of 123.9, according to Mercer’s ranking.
Kyiv’s dramatic rise to the top of the international list is mainly due to the appreciation of the local currency, the hryvnia, against the U.S. dollar, and “general price increases,” Mercer’s press release said. Many other Eastern European cities, on the contrary, have dropped sharply in the ranking due to the devaluation of local currencies against the dollar, the release stated. For example, Prague has fallen 22 places to 50th place in the ranking.
Mercer’s survey measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each city, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment, and is aimed at helping multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees.
Kyiv real estate prices has skyrocketed in recent years, as has the cost of living in general due to rising fuel costs and other changes that followed in the wake of the Orange Revolution. Another change under the administration of President Viktor Yushchenko is lighter visa restrictions for foreigner visiting Ukraine.
(truncated text for reasons outlined in the introduction to Kiev)
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on May 28, 2006
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