Moving to Panama City

Today we look at moving to Panama City in Panama from Managua in Nicaragua. 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 Panama City people speak Spanish and English. In Managua people speak Spanish, English and indigenous languages.

Panama City is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua. Panama City has more than 80 banks, more than 15 of them being national. The city also boasts several tourist attractions, and is a stopover for other nearby destinations in the country as well as a tourist destination in its own right. Managua is Nicaragua's chief trading center for coffee, cotton, and other crops. It is also an important industrial center.

The overall cost of living rank in Panama City is 228 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with low cost of living locations.  An expatriate moving from Managua to Panama City will experience a change in cost of living of 4.8%.
In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Panama City is ranked as a some hardship location with a hardship index of 20% compared to Managua with a hardship index of 40% which is an extreme hardship location.

Source: Cost of living Panama City, Panama as at July 2011.