Liveable LatAm

The dudes at Mercer came out with their "Worldwide Cost of Living Survey", 2009 version yesterday. The thing is aimed at ex-pats doing business, not locals who know the cheap ways of living. The idea is that for U$585 (not joking) you get this big wodge of a report that will tell businesses just how much it costs to send their troops abroad.

As usual, we don't care much for the silly regions around the world like "North America" or "Europe" or "Asia" cos nothing much happens in those places anyway.....and they have no idea about how to make a decent mojito. Tokyo is top...big deal. So here we go with the important stuff...LatAm! Mercer surveyed 16 cities in the region (and although limited, gotta say the choices are fairly representative) and here's how they panned out. The ranking shows just how expensive the place is in the 143 cities surveyed.

City	Country	Rank
Caracas	Venezuela	15
Sao Paulo	Brazil	72
Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	73
Panama City	Panama	93
Santo Domingo	Dom. Rep.	104
Buenos Aires	Argentina	112
Guatemala City	Guatemala	119
Bogota	Colombia	120
Lima	Peru	122
Santiago	Chile	128
Montevideo	Uruguay	131
San Jose	Costa Rica	132
Quito	Ecuador	136
Mexico City	Mexico	137
Asuncion	Paraguay	141
Monterrey	Mexico	143

Way up and above the rest is Caracas at 15th most expensive. Now I'm not shelling out U$585 to read the whole report (you think I'm teh stoopid or summink?), but even though Caracas is pricey these days I'm guessing that the only way it can be that high is by calculating everything at the VEF2.15/U$1 official exchange rate. You seriously telling me a foreign exec would ignore the parallel market for his living expenses? If so, s/he ain't much of a bizperson to begin with...

Then comes usual expensive suspects Rio and SP in Brazil (and yes, they are expensive). But Caracas aside, seems that LatAm offers pretty good value compared to the rest of the world, as the 15 cities all come in the bottom half of the ranking. And when you factor in the amount of fun and life on offer down here, there's no better place in the world...well that's what I think, anyway. DYODD, dude.