Iceland ousts Switzerland as world’s priciest nation

Reykjavík (TIP): Iceland is again the world’s most expensive country, surpassing Switzerland for the first time in years, calculations by a local trade union showed.
The price level in the land of fire and ice now exceeds that of Switzerland by three percentage points, said Mr Vilhjalmur Hilmarsson, an economist at the white-collar union Viska union who used data from the Eurostat statistics body and the Icelandic central bank. Icelandic prices last topped the Swiss in 2018, according to Eurostat. The development illustrates challenges of the small Atlantic economy that is historically prone to booms and busts. A post-pandemic surge in tourism – its key growth engine – has fuelled an economic rebound and a rally in prices that the central bank is struggling to contain.