The capital and largest city of Angola, Luanda, is the most expensive city in the world, according to an annual survey by "Mercer", a New York firm that deals with human resources and financial consulting.
According to the company's data, Luanda is more expensive than Moscow and Tokyo, so renting a luxury apartment with two bedrooms in that city costs about 10.000 dollars per month - while in Moscow it is "only" 4.600.
Luanda is the main port and administrative center of Angola. Located on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in southern Africa, it has about five million inhabitants. Luanda is the third most populous Portuguese-speaking city in the world - after Brazil's São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but also the largest Portuguese-speaking capital in the world, as it has more inhabitants than Brasilia, Maputo and Lisbon.
Angola, a former Portuguese colony, gained independence in 1975, and Luanda was then already a modern city. However, development was stopped by the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 2002, when the largest number of Portuguese left Angola, although there are still around 120.000 of them in Luanda today.
Data say that the number of Portuguese is still increasing, as many are "returning" to Angola due to the economic crisis in their country. Luanda is under construction, the city authorities are working rapidly to solve the issue of social housing, since most of the city is still made up of slums.
The reconstruction of Angola began immediately after the end of the war, and oil and diamonds contribute the most to accelerated economic growth. In a warm and very dry climate, mainly African ethnic groups live in Luanda, and among the foreigners, apart from the Portuguese, there are Latin Americans, and the number of Chinese and Vietnamese is growing.
Luanda is under construction, the city authorities are working rapidly to solve the issue of social housing, since most of the city still consists of slums
A third of all Angolans live in Luanda, and 53 percent are poor - while luxury buildings for the wealthy minority are "blooming", and Luanda is for the first time bearing the epithet of "the most expensive city in the world". After Luanda, Moscow and Tokyo, N'Djamena in Chad is in fourth place, Singapore is fifth, and the "top 10 list" is followed by Hong Kong, Geneva, Zurich and Bern in Switzerland and Sydney in Australia.
The list, which "Mercer" makes to help multinational companies and governments to more easily determine the budget for employees abroad, includes 214 cities, and the "calculation" includes the prices of 200 standard services and products, including accommodation, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.
The price differences between standard products in the cities are interesting: a cup of coffee in Managua costs $1,54, in Moscow it costs $8,29, a hamburger in Calcutta costs $3,62, in Caracas it costs $13,49, a cinema ticket in Johannesburg costs $5,91 dollar, and in London 20,10...
The key cost, which determines the city's ranking on the list, is, of course, accommodation. Renting a luxury apartment with two bedrooms in Luanda thus costs about 10.000 dollars per month, in Moscow 4.600 - which is 14 times more than in Karachi.
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