Lagos Ranks World’s Second Cheapest City

By: Onifade Bello

Nigeria’s foremost commercial hub, Lagos, has been ranked world’s second cheapest city for expatriate to live. This is contained in a report by the Economic Intelligence Unit released on Monday 7th November 2017.

According to the report,“Although Nigeria has been attracting significant interest and investment in recent years, the fall in global oil prices has driven a collapse in the value of the Nigerian naira, which pushed down relative pricing, despite strong local inflation. The relative cost of living in Lagos has more than halved since 2008, which might signal renewed interest from foreign investors, with price levels so low by international standards.

The Asian city of Singapore was ranked the most expensive city for expatriate for the fourth consecutive year. This was followed by other Asian cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo and Osaka.

Meanwhile, listed among the ten most expensive cities were Zurich, Geneva, Paris and New York, which were in third, seventh, eighthand ninth positions respectively. The Danish capital, Copenhagen, rounded off the top ten.

Almaty of Kazakhstan was ranked the cheapest city for expatriates in the world. This was followed by Lagos, Bangalore in India, Karachi in Pakistan and Algiers in Algeria.

The ranking was categorically based cost of household goods, domestic help and personal care as well as the cost to buy and run a car, the report stated.

The World Cost of Living is a biannual survey which draws up over 400 prices of about 160 products and services such as rent, food, transport and recreational activities, amonth others.

With this report, Lagos, the nerve centre of commercial activities, remains one of the best and affordable cities for expatriates in the world to embrace for their businesses.

NAN