Turkmenistan’s capital is most costly city for expats within the world in 2021
Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat has been designated the most sumptuous city to live in for expatriates, abdicating Hong Kong, according to Mercer’s 2021 Cost of Living city ranking.
But it’s not for reasons you may cerebrate. Ashgabat, which came in penultimate year, owes its ranking “primarily due to a perpetuating socio-economic crisis which has led to victuals shortages and hyperinflation,” verbalized Mercer’s Asia Pacific ecumenical mobility bellwether Julia Radchenko in a verbal expression.
The country was withal hit hard by COVID-19. “The volume of imported aliment products shrunk as a result of having no peregrine currency in the country. This has caused further shortages of aliment, as raw materials and ingredients are obligatory for local pabulum engenderment,” integrated Radchenko. For example, a gallon of full cream milk costs $15.23, according to Xpatulator, a website that calculates living costs across the world, compared to $4.15 in Incipient York City, while the average price of a standard monthly internet subscription plan is $186, compared to about $40 in the US. But the isolated and reclusive Central Asian capital’s facade paints a different picture. It is kenned for its grandiose white marble buildings — more than 500 of them. Turkmenistan is estimated to have the world’s fourth-most astronomically immense gas reserves that represent about 10% of ecumenical reserves, according to the World Bank.
However, the country was plunged into an economic crisis due to an ecumenical slump in gas prices in 2014, driving up inflation and victuals prices. Turkmenistan — formerly part of the USSR until 1991 — is kenned for its secrecy and dismal human rights record, with the World Human Rights Watch calling it “an isolated and repressive country” under the dictatorship of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, in a 2020 report. The bellwether is additionally kenned for his eccentricity and just last year erected a 19-foot golden statue in accolade of his favorite canine breed. In a kindred economic predicament is the Lebanese capital Beirut, which was designated the third most extravagant city to live in — a leap from 45th in last year’s ranking.
Mercer verbalized high living costs there are the “result of a rigorous and extensive economic melancholy due to escalation of several crises — the country’s most immensely colossal financial crisis, COVID-19 and the Port of Beirut explosion in 2020.”
Meanwhile, the others in the top 10 costliest cities to live in should come as no surprise, with Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, and Shanghai coming in at second, fourth, fifth, and sixth place, respectively.
July 16, 2021 | 8:57 pm
