Moving to Maseru

Today we look at moving to Maseru in Lesotho from Almaty in Kazakhstan. We highlight cost of living and other major differences likely to be experienced in our series of short blogs on moving between different international locations.

In Maseru people speak Sesotho, English. In Almaty people speak Kazakh, Russian. Maseru is the capital and only sizable city of Lesotho. Almaty is the largest city in Kazakhstan.
Commerce in Maseru is centered around two neighboring central business districts. The western business district holds larger office buildings, department stores and several banks. The eastern business district hosts mainly smaller businesses, markets and street vendors. The central business districts are the largest employment centers within the city. Almaty is the major commercial center of Kazakhstan.

The overall cost of living rank in Maseru is 205 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with low cost of living locations.  An expatriate moving from Almaty to Maseru will experience a change in cost of living of -10.4%.
In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Maseru is ranked as a high degree of hardship location with a hardship index of 30% compared to Almaty with a hardship index of 30% which is a high degree of hardship location.

Source: http://www.xpatulator.com as at July 2011.