July 9, 2002	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 27,1423

SINGAPORE, July 8: Hong Kong has replaced Tokyo as the world’s most expensive city, and Asia is the most expensive region, according to a global survey released on Monday, which placed Johannesburg as the cheapest place to be in.

Higher prices in the basket of goods belonging to the personal care, domestic supplies and transport categories, contributed to Hong Kong’s ascent to the most expensive city rank.

Moscow is now considered the second most expensive place to live in, followed by Tokyo which has fallen from first position last year, the survey by multi-national firm Mercer Human Resource Consulting showed.

Using New York as the base city at 100 points on the index, Hong Kong scored 124.2 and was three-and-a-half times costlier than Johannesburg at the bottom of the table with 34.4 points. New York moved up from 8th to 7th place.

Chinese cities were also seen to be climbing the scale, with Beijing and Shanghai ranked fourth and fifth, ahead of Osaka in Japan which was sixth with an index of 103.2.—AFP