What happened: Sharing the data from a crowdsourced database, finance minister Shaukat Tarin tweeted, “Pakistan ranks least costly among 139 countries of the world.” Tarin shared the data from Numbeo and shared the screenshot of a table titled, “The Cost of Living Index by Country 2021 Mid-Year.” Whereas, it is pertinent to mention that Numbeo is the same database about which a Swedish report in 2017 noted, “Numbeo should hardly be considered stats; it’s more like reviews. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can change the data, as many times as they want…”
Details: However, the tweet by the finance minister on February 20 showed Pakistan at the bottom of the list out of the 139 countries. The screenshot shared by Shaukat Tarin noted that the cost of living average in Pakistan is 71.52% lower than in the US and the residence rent in Pakistan is much lower than that of US.
More: Subsequently, the table showed that the grocery index in Pakistan is the lowest after that of Nepal, and the local purchasing power of the Pakistani was also noted at 24.56%. However, the minister’s claims came a few days after the prices of petroleum increased and inflation was on the rise.
