Romanian capital is the world’s 67th most expensive city, UBS’s 2018 “Cost of living in cities around the world” survey on Tuesday reveals, which published a research on prices and earnings of 77 international cities and how they fare against each other.
Among the 14 metropolitan areas in Eastern Europe analysed by UBS, Bucharest ranks 11th, being cheaper to live only in St. Petersburg, Zagreb and Kiev. The most expensive cities in Eastern Europe are Ljubljana – 42th, Tallinn – 44th and Warsaw – 47th.
Zurich and Geneva are still the world’s two most expensive major cities, according to the annual rankings of 77 metropolitan areas by Swiss bank UBS. Egypt’s capital Cairo is the cheapest.
The two Swiss cities beat New York, Oslo and Copenhagen, the survey also reads.
“The biggest difference can be found in services, such as haircuts, an hour of household help, dry cleaning, language classes etc., where Zurich is 20 percent pricier on average than Geneva. The second-largest difference is in electronic devices (+16 percent) like smartphones, televisions and notebooks,” the survey reads.
UBS based its calculations on a basket of 128 goods and services representing the spending habits of a three-person European family – with separate data sets including and excluding rent, the single largest cost for most people.
For this 17th edition, UBS multiplied case studies by examining, for example, how much a cup of coffee costs in the 77 cities. After this indicator, Bucharest ranks 50th, with an average coffee price of USD 2.24, ahead of cities like Toronto, Madrid, Istanbul, Rome or Lisbon, where coffee costs USD 0.74. Doha residents pay the most for a coffee – USD 6.40, followed by those in Copenhagen and Dubai.