Sri Lanka is the second most expensive country in South Asia to live in
Posted on October 31st, 2025
Courtesy The Daily Mirror
- Cost of living for an individual being $506 or Rs. 153,899 excluding rent to live a comfortable life
- Maldives is considered the most expensive SAARC country to live in comfortably with a cost of $840.4 per person
- For a family of four living in the city of Colombo, the monthly costs are Rs. 570,997 excluding rent to live comfortably. This includes the cost of childcare, groceries, outings, dining, school fees, house expenses, vehicle expenses etc
Colombo, Oct. 31 (Daily Mirror) – Sri Lanka is the second most expensive South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) country to live with cost of living for an individual being $506 or Rs. 153,899 excluding rent to live a comfortable life according to Numbeo, a user-generated cost-of-living statistics website.
According to the website for a family of four living in the city of Colombo, the monthly costs are Rs. 570,997 excluding rent to live comfortably. This includes the cost of childcare, groceries, outings, dining, school fees, house expenses, vehicle expenses etc.
Numbeo is the world’s largest cost of living database and a crowd sourced global resource for quality of life data. It provides insights into cost of living. According to the site Maldives is considered the most expensive SAARC country to live in comfortably with a cost of $840.4 per person.
With people being burdened by both higher taxes and increased cost of living due to higher prices, the Central Bank’s ‘Annual Economic Review 2024’ notes that based on the National Consumer Price Index (NCPI), the estimated average monthly household consumption expenditure increased by 1.6 percent from Rs. 103,383 in 2023 to Rs. 105,063 in 2024.
Nevertheless, this highlights a notable easing compared to the 74.9 percent increase recorded in 2022 compared to 2021, as well as the 16.5 percent increase in 2023 compared to 2022. In such situations, families increasingly resort to negative coping mechanisms when it comes to managing their spending.
According to Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) data from September 18, 2024 to 18 September 2025, the average price per kilogramme for nine commonly consumed vegetables rose from Rs. 225 to Rs. 321.10, representing an overall increase of 42.7 percent.