You're reading: Survey: Kyiv 8th cheapest city in world

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a lot of stuff in Ukraine. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s ranking of the cost of living in 133 major cities, Kyiv — with a population of 3 million people — is the eighth cheapest major city in the world.

The ranking is based on the cost of living through tracking prices of food and other items.

Kyiv, along with Bucharest and New Delhi, comes in at 124th – six places down from last year, the report says.
The results coincide with another survey by Expatistan, which found that Kyiv is the third cheapest major city in the world among 213 municipalities surveyed. Only Hyderabad, India, and Tblisi, Georgia.

In order to evaluate the cost of living in each of the cities, Economist researchers collect the prices for over 160 items in various stores in each city: supermarkets, mid-priced stores and higher-priced speciality outlets. An average is then evaluated, and converted (using the current exchange rate) into a common currency – U.S. dollars.

Not to its credit, Kyiv offers some of the cheapest cigarettes in the world, with the average price of a pack of 20 branded cigarettes being less than $1. Compare that to New York, a city at the other end of the ranking (ninth in the world), where a pack of 20 cigarettes cost 15 times more – $14.25.

All of the other items in the survey – bread, wine and petrol – are the cheapest they have ever been in Kyiv in the last decade. A one-kilogram loaf of bread on average costs $1.07, compared to $2.12 five years ago or $1.44 10 years ago. A 750 millileter bottle of table wine costs $5.67 with its highest price being back in 2007 – $15.35.

A liter of unleaded gas currently costs $0.77, also the cheapest it has ever been in the last 10 years, but considerably more expensive than in other cheap cities. For example in Algiers it currently costs $0.28, making the north African city the second cheapest place in the world to fill up, according to the Economist’s report. Another cheap city for motorists is Lagos, Nigeria, where a liter of gas costs $0.46.

However, Kyivans have few reasons to be cheered by the low cost of living – the report suggests dramatic drops in the ranking, such as that of Kyiv, are likely due to the impact of political or economic disruption.

“Karachi, Algiers, Kyiv and Lagos have faced well-documented economic, political, security and infrastructural challenges,” the report says, “And there is some correlation between The Economist Intelligence Unit’s cost of living ranking and its sister ranking, the liveability survey. Put simply, cheaper cities tend also to be less liveable.”

This year’s Worldwide Cost of Living ranking is topped by Singapore, which takes the title of the most expensive city in the world for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Hong Kong (also a non-mover), Zurich (which dropped one position) and Japan’s Tokyo and Osaka, which last year failed to make the top 10.

The only eurozone city in the top 10 list is Paris, which has been among the 10 most expensive cities in the world for 15 years in a row and this year comes in at eighth. Two other European cities, Geneva and Copenhagen, also made the list, with Geneva coming third and Denmark’s capital coming tenth.

The Worldwide Cost of Living is a biannual Economist Intelligence Unit survey, which compares over 400 individual prices across 160 products and services. The survey is designed “to help human resources and finance managers calculate cost-of-living allowances and build compensation packages for expatriates and business travellers.”