Indonesia's Most Expensive Cities to Live In

The Cost of Living Survey (CLS) by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) places Jakarta as one of the provinces with the highest cost of living in Indonesia. The cost of living in this city reaches Rp 7.5 million. This amount is a monthly accumulation with an average household size of four people. Nationally, the average cost of living in Indonesia is Rp 5.5 million per month.

The CLS is a routine activity conducted by the BPS every five years. The last CLS, conducted in 2012, covered 136,080 households in Indonesia, monitoring the value of consumption expenditure for both goods and services over a full year.

Compared to the results of the 2007 CLS, there was a decrease in the percentage of living costs in the food commodities group from 19.57 percent to 18.85 percent, the processed food, beverages, tobacco, and cigarettes group from 16.55 percent to 16.19 percent, and the housing, water, electricity, gas, and fuel group from 25.41 percent to 25.37 percent.

Meulaboh has the highest proportion of food costs in its cost of living, while Jakarta has the lowest proportion of food costs in its cost of living.