Mumbai:
Mumbai and Delhi are among the least expensive cities
in the world. But there is a catch. There is not enough
money to spend for people living in the two biggest cities
of the country. These are the findings of a study, Price
and Earnings 2006, conducted by Swiss banking major
and the world''s largest wealth manager, UBS.
Mumbai
has emerged as the second least expensive city, while
Delhi ranks a bit higher as the fourth least expensive.
However, the study says, wage levels in these two cities
are among the lowest in the world. The gross earnings
in Indian cities on the whole are less than 10 per cent
of the wages in top-ranked cities.
Delhi
is the lowest in the earnings chart with gross hourly
average wage of $ 6.1, as against Copenhagen''s $118.2,
UBS said in its Price and Earnings 2006 report.
While
a Delhiite needs to work nearly one hour (59 minutes)
to buy a large McDonald burger against the global average
of 35 minutes of work, the time is as high as one-and-a-half
hours in Nairobi. In contrast, in US cities like Los Angeles,
New York, Chicago and Miami a maximum of 13 minutes are
needed to earn enough to buy a Big Mac, the report pointed
out.
Seol
is the 24th most expensive city among the 71 major cities
in the world and people living in the city work the longest
hours, according to the report. In the Asia Pacific region,
Seoul is the second most expensive city after Tokyo, the
fifth most expensive city globally.
Tokyo
has the highest wage levels with a $17.70 gross income
per hour, followed by Sydney. Workers in Tokyo, Taipei
and Seoul. Sydney and Auckland with the highest purchasing
power in the region have made it into the top ten worldwide.
Oslo,
London, Copenhagen, Zurich and Tokyo are the five most
expensive cities, excluding the cost of housing. The study
is based on 122 standardised goods and services and covers
71 cities globally.
Prices
and Earnings is a survey published by the economists at
UBS every three years. It compares the prices of goods
and services, wages, wage deductions and working hours,
along with the resulting purchasing power, in 71 cities
across all continents. More than 35,000 data items are
collected and analysed during research for the publication.
Exchange rates and differences in inflation have a crucial
impact on the comparison over time, and this update is
simply based on the statistics from the 2003 analysis,
adjusted
for relative inflation and recalculated to reflect current
exchange rates (as at end-2004). In addition, differing
rates of productivity growth are factored into the recalculated
figures for wages.
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