It is cheaper to live in Port of Spain than it is in Caracas, New York, Delhi or Havana, an international survey has found.

Trinidad and Tobago's capital has a lower cost of living than most major international cities, the study by US-based human resource consulting group Mercer showed.

In its Cost of Living Survey released recently and published in UK newspaper The Guardian, Mercer ranked Port of Spain as the 104th most expensive of 214 cities for expatriates to reside in.

The survey covered the cities across five continents and measured the comparative cost of more than 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.

New York was used as the base city for the index and all cities were compared against New York.

The cost of housing —often the biggest expense for expats according to Mercer — played an important part in determining where cities were ranked.

Port of Spain was cheaper to buy food and live in than London, which ranked 17th, New York and Los Angeles, which ranked 27th and 55th respectively, and Toronto and Montreal, which came in at 76 and 98 in the survey of the most expensive cities.

Closer to home, Port of Spain was also cheaper than Caracas, Venezuela, which ranked 100th, and Pointe a Pitre, Guadeloupe, which was ranked 86th.

While Port of Spain was less expensive to live in than Delhi in India, as well as Miami and San Francisco in the US, it was more costly to live here than in US cities like Washington, DC, and Boston, the Mercer survey said.

Food, entertainment and housing were cheaper to get in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Port au Prince, Haiti, which ranked 129 and 141 respectively.

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The top five were Luanda, Angola, followed by Tokyo, Japan, in second spot, Ndjamena in Chad, Moscow, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, the survey said.