Moscow has been named the city with the highest cost of living in the world.
This conclusion was made by specialists of Mercer Human Resource Consulting, an international consulting company, who compared prices for accommodation, transport, meals, household services, domestic appliances and entertainment in 144 cities of the world. Experts believe that skyrocketing housing prices secured first place for the capital. Average price per square meter in new buildings is presently around $ 3,500 and it is even higher in the secondary market.
Prices are growing for lease of office premises, sales entities and warehouses. This naturally incurs an inevitable price hike for products, consumer goods and services. The number of relatively cheap stores in the capital has been declining for several years already, especially downtown. These are supplanted by expensive supermarkets and boutiques.
Indeed, capital authorities have found that a sort of alternative market has developed in an attempt to avoid a social explosion. Numerous mobile points of sale have appeared in the streets, where an average Muscovite, who is far from being wealthy, may acquire the most needed items at low prices. However, results of numerous inspections reveal that quality of goods that are sold here should be better, especially as far as sanitary standards are concerned.
Investments into capital real estate have recently become more and more attractive for wealthy Muscovites and for those coming from other regions. Guests from foreign nations strive to purchase apartments. Abundance of buyers dramatically reduced the opportunity for selection of the apartment.
According to real estate agencies, people often purchase nearly the first apartment offered to them without waiting for the next real estate price hike.
Quite a few people attempt to find a more desirable option – this process takes more than a month while housing prices are virtually growing every day.
The status of Moscow as the most expensive city in the world becomes a serious obstacle to developing international economic ties and considerably narrows the list of prospective foreign partners. If on the one hand large companies are prepared to pay enormous prices for rental of housing or hotel suites for their employees, foreign representatives of small and medium- size businesses, who have to pay for everything out of their own pocket, are rather more sceptical with respect to the opportunity of doing business in the capital. The level of prices makes hotels virtually inaccessible, while attempts to rent an apartment are present many difficulties.
The logic is that small and medium businesses can be drawn into the capital by constructing a network of inexpensive housing blocks and business centres.
However, the notion of 'inexpensive' sounds strange at least in the most expensive city on the globe.
