- Damascus, Syria, is the least expensive city among 173 cities analyzed by The Economist Intelligence Unit.
- Damascus had an index of 13, while Singapore and Zurich both had an index value of 104.
- A research manager said many of the less expensive cities “are particularly cheap for consumer goods.”
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The Economist Intelligence Unit found Damascus, Syria; Ahmedabad, India; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan as less expensive than many other cities around the world, per a recent report about the EIU’s Worldwide Cost of Living survey results.
The survey looks at many individual prices from lots of different cities.
“The worldwide cost of living index assesses a certain number of representative business destinations, amounting to 173 cities in this year’s survey,” the EIU told Business Insider. “Several factors are at play behind the list of cities, such as the city’s size and population, economic and public importance, as well as their importance to our clients and subscribers.”
Barsali Bhattacharyya, a research manager at the EIU, told Business Insider that a lot of the places at the bottom of the ranking of the 173 locations — with the least expensive places at the bottom — “are particularly cheap for consumer goods” like groceries. They are also cheap for domestic help, Bhattacharyya said.
“Low prices are often a result of a combination of factors like low incomes and competitive, capitalist marketplaces,” Bhattacharyya said. “Another factor that quite often pulls cities down our ranks is the strength of their local currencies against the US dollar.”
New York was the base city used to compare the places in the world, and it had an index value of 100. Damascus, Syria, had an index of just 13. That was the lowest score, so it was the least expensive city. The report noted that’s true despite “its WCOL price basket rose by 321% year on year in local-currency terms (amid lifting of government subsidies and devaluation of the currency, which increased import costs).”
Singapore and Zurich were considered the most expensive cities in the recent report based on the 173 cities. They had an index value of 104, which was way above the index values for Buenos Aires, Argentina; Tunis, Tunisia; and Damascus.
Below are the least expensive cities and their index values noted in a new EIU report.