Mumbai, Bangalore among cheapest cities in world: EIU

London, Mar 10: Mumbai and Bangalore are among the cheapest cities in the world, according to a top London-based forecast group that named Singapore as the most expensive city.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked Singapore as the priciest ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong, Geneva and Paris. The EIU also said India and Pakistan accounted for five of the 10 least expensive cities in the world.

London was sixth and New York seventh on the list that compares the cost of a basket of goods across 133 cities, 'BBC News' reported. The cheapest were Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, followed by Bangalore and Mumbai, the EIU said.

The expense of cities are tabled by comparing them to the cost of living in New York. Although Singapore was the most expensive, the cost of living there was 10 per cent cheaper when compared to New York than was the case in the EIU survey a year ago.

As cities coped with economic factors ranging from the strength of the US dollar and currency devaluations to falling oil and commodity prices and geopolitical uncertainty, there was a considerable movement in the rankings, researchers said.

"In nearly 17 years of working on this survey I cannot recall a year as volatile as 2015," said Jon Copestake, an editor of the survey. "Falling commodity prices have created deflationary pressures in some countries, but in others currency weakness caused by these falls has led to spiralling inflation."

PTI