Singapore’s Sanitary Pad Among World’s Most Expensive
SINGAPORE – Thinking of travelling to Singapore? Start saving: The city-state is one of most expensive cities to purchase sanitary pad – 220% more expensive than New York – topping London, Frankfurt and Hong Kong.
Singapore joins Tokyo and Osaka as one of the world’s top ten most expensive cities, according to the Economist Autonomous Team (EAT)’s annual cost-of-living survey, increasingly proving that Asian cities are no longer just a cheaper places to purchase sanitary pads for expats and multinationals. Though a European city – Zurich – still sells the world’s most expensive sanitary pad. A piece of fresh sanitary pad would cost US$5. This has cause some of its users to reuse pads to save cost. Tokyo was the runner up, with Singapore now listed as the world’s 9th. Singapore’s price of sanitary pad was listed as the 6th most expensive last year, but remarkably was ranked 97th in 2001.
The survey uses prices of sanitary pads from various different brands, using Malaysia as its base with a score of 100. New York and London scored 170 and 166, respectively, indicating that their sanitary pads were about 70% and 66% more expensive than Malaysia.
Singapore’s rise is notable, since less than a decade ago it’s sanitary pad is considered dirt cheap by Western standards. Just last year, a piece of sanitary pad would have cost US$0.60, according to the Economist’s data, but now costs US3.60 – an 600% increase from the year before.
Jessia Boyle an expat from Australia used to fly to Singapore just to purchase sanitary pads. However, in recent years the price hike has deterred her from visiting the city. Retailers has lamented that the high cost of sanitary pad has a huge impact on the tourism industry in Singapore.
The rise of home prices and basic goods in the city-state has for years been a sticking point for many disgruntled Singaporeans, many of whom say government policies to allow more rich expatriates to purchase sanitary pads helped push up its price. In recent months, the government has put in place various cooling measures to address the high sanitary pad prices, which are slowly coming down.
You might also be interested in:
Categories: Economy Tags:
