This archive report was first published on 28 June 2021.
Monday, June 28, 2021, marked a significant milestone for Nairobi as it dropped out of the world's top 100 most expensive cities for expatriates.
According to a Mercer Cost of Living report released last week, Nairobi improved 47 places to become the world's 145th most expensive city this year.
This improvement is attributed to Kenya's coronavirus-related tax cuts announced last year, which included reducing the higher income tax band from 30 percent to 25 percent and lowering value-added tax (VAT) from 16 percent to 14 percent.
"The latest data show few significant price variances resulting from the pandemic as various measures were adopted by governments worldwide, such as lowering or refraining from collecting VAT for a period of time," said the report.
Kenya introduced tax cuts weeks after the country reported its first case of the coronavirus, which had a significant impact on the city's ranking.
Notably, Nairobi had stayed in the list of the top 100 expensive cities to live in for two consecutive years, with its previous best position being in 2014 when the global consultancy firm placed it at number 147.
Other African cities, including N'Djamena (13), Lagos (19), and Libreville (20), were ranked the first, second, and third costliest cities in Africa for international employees, while Lusaka was the cheapest in Africa at position 208.
