S'pore world's most expensive city? No

ACCORDING to a report released on Monday by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Singapore has the dubious distinction of being the most expensive city in the world - a headline that was e-mailed, tweeted and broadcast across the globe.

Certainly, even by the standards of First World cities, Singapore is hardly low-cost. However, results vary from survey to survey. In another recent one by the real estate firm Savills released just before the EIU's, Hong Kong was named the most expensive city in the world in which to locate employees; Singapore came in 5th. A survey by the research firm Mercer focused on expatriate living costs, released in July 2013, again ranked Singapore fifth; the most expensive turned out to be - few would have guessed it - Luanda in Angola.

But now, to be ranked No 1 for living costs by the EIU (compared with 18th a decade ago by the same organisation), ahead of cities such as Paris, Oslo and Zurich and 127 others, comes as something of a surprise. However, this startling result is subject to several caveats.