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Zurich leads the way in pricey cities ranking

zurich seen from above
Switzerland’s largest city Zurich is the country’s economic and financial powerhouse. © Keystone / Michael Buholzer

Zurich, tied with Singapore, is the world’s most expensive city, according to a ranking by British magazine The Economist. Geneva is joint third.

Switzerland’s biggest city Zurich has thus moved up five places since the last ranking, according to data published on Thursday by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the analytical research unit of the Economist Group.

The city’s top position is partly due to the strong Swiss franc. However, high prices for food and leisure activities also played a role.

+ Read more: why is Switzerland so expensive?

Zurich and Singapore (1st place each) were followed in the EIU ranking by Geneva and New York (3rd place each), Hong Kong (5th), Los Angeles (6th), Paris (7th), Copenhagen and Tel Aviv (8th) and San Francisco (10th).

Damascus cheapest

According to the EIU, the cheapest city in the world is Syrian capital Damascus (173rd). It is followed by the Iranian capital Tehran (172nd) and Libya’s capital Tripoli (171st).

The Russian cities of Moscow (142nd) and St. Petersburg (147th) were among the cities that slipped most in the ranking, due to the weakening of the rouble as a result of the sanctions due to the war in Ukraine.

According to the EIU, it surveys the prices of over 400 products and services in 173 cities twice a year and converts them into US dollars. The data for the current ranking was collected between mid-August and mid-September – before the outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian war, which has since influenced exchange rates and prices in Israel the EIU writes.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

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