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BEIRUT: The mid-2019 Cost of Living Index produced by crowdsourced global database Numbeo ranked Beirut fourth-highest among 21 Arab cities and 157th among 377 cities around the world, Byblos Banks Lebanon This Week economic report said. Numbeo, a global statistics website based in Belgrade, enables users to share and compare information about the cost of living between cities and countries worldwide.
Numbeo relies on input from local residents and also uses data from official sources to compute the indexes, the report said of the rankings methodology.
CoLI provides the values of four other indexes, namely the Rent Index, the Groceries Price Index, the Restaurant Price Index, and the Local Purchasing Power Index for each country, always benchmarked against the city of New York.
Beirut ranked 177th globally and seventh among Arab cities overall for mid-2018, the report said.
Mid-2019, groceries in Beirut are more expensive than in Athens and Barcelona, but less costly than Limassol, Madrid and Bangkok.
Groceries are also cheaper in Beirut than in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi and Amman.
Meanwhile, the Rent Index ranked Beirut 126th-highest globally and sixth among Arab cities.
This indicates that renting an apartment in Beirut is more expensive than in Panama City or in Adelaide, Australia, but less expensive than in Duesseldorf and Limassol.
The only Arab cities that boast even higher rent prices are Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Ajman in the United Arab Emirates and Manama. Beijing, Shanghai and Moscow are the only cities in the indexs upper middle-income countries where rent will set you back more than in Beirut.
The Restaurant Index, which compares the prices of meals and drinks at restaurants and pubs relative to New York City, ranked Beirut in 161th place globally, in fourth place among Arab cities and first among cities in UMICs.
Globally, meals and drinks at restaurants and pubs in the Lebanese capital are more expensive than in Berlin, Thessaloniki in Greece and Panama City, while they are cheaper than in Spanish tourist giant Barcelona and the capital Madrid.
Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha are the only Arab cities where it is more expensive to go out to dinner than in Beirut.
According to Numbeos latest statistics, the Cayman Islands emerged as the most expensive country in the world in 2019s midyear rankings, trailed by Bermuda and Switzerland.
Regionally, the United Arab Emirates was the most expensive Arab country, ranking 33rd globally, followed by Qatar at 34th spot and Lebanon at 36th.
Credit Libanais stated in its latest Weekly Market Watch report that the historical evolution of the CoLI and accompanying indexes for Beirut showed prices in the Lebanese capital had generally decreased over the last couple of years.
This drop is mainly attributed to the nosedive in the Rent Index, dropping from 40.56 in mid-2016 to 26.20 in mid-2019, mainly owing to the dire state of the realty sector and the Lebanese economy in general, the bank added.
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