Ashgabat tops Hong Kong

Turkmenistan's capital Ashgabat has overtaken Hong Kong as the  world's most expensive city for foreign workers, a survey showed on  Tuesday.

Beirut jumped to third place in the 2021 Mercer survey from 45th a  year earlier owing to a "severe and extensive economic depression"  resulting from multiple crises, including the country's financial  trouble, Covid-19 and a deadly blast in the Lebanese port.

Ashgabat rose from second in the previous survey to the first spot  due to "high local inflation", Mercer France global mobility practice  leader Jean-Philippe Sarra told AFP.

Turkmenistan is almost wholly dependent on natural gas exports and  has struggled to recover from the global energy price slump in 2014 that  battered the local manat currency and plunged many citizens into  poverty.

Despite the long-running economic crisis, authorities broke ground on  a major expansion of Ashgabat in May, with autocrat leader Gurbanguly  Berdymukhamedov pledging to turn it into "one of the most prosperous  cities in the world".

While Hong Kong, with its notoriously expensive housing, dropped to second place, Tokyo also fell one spot to fourth.

Zurich dropped to fifth and is among three Swiss cities in the top 10 along with Geneva (8) and Bern (10).

Two other Chinese cities are among the most expensive in the world  for expatriates: Shanghai climbed one spot to number six while Beijing  rose to ninth.

Singapore took seventh place.

US cities fell in this year's ranking mostly because of currency  fluctuations, according to Mercer.

New York dropped eight spots but was the most expensive in the country at number 14.

The world's least expensive city for foreign employees is Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek at 209, according to the survey.