Singapore again ranked Asia’s top city: study

For the second year in a row, Singapore has been ranked as Asia's leading city.

In PricewaterhouseCooper's "Cities of Opportunity" study, Singapore climbed two places to seventh place out of 27 cities surveyed, ahead of other Asian cities.

The city-state ranked first in ease of doing business, transportation and infrastructure. The study, which is in its fifth year, also revealed that Singapore ranked highly in areas of economic clout and technology readiness.

The lion city is also the only Asian city to break the top ten in health, security and safety.

Singapore also broke the top 10 in City Gateway, a new indicator category that measures a city's global connectedness and attraction to the outside world — largely due to its high ranking in the number of international association meetings and international tourists.

"Singapore continues to be a key financial hub in Asia, and its high ranking reflects the city's attraction as an economically competitive and easy place to do business. Apart from its strong trade network, infrastructure and skilled workforce, Singapore is also able to stay nimble to seize opportunities, which is a characteristic that helps it cope with economic uncertainty," said Gautam Banerjee, executive chairman of PwC Singapore.

Banerjee added that Singapore's success as a livable city is due to its forward thinking and innovation as well as its people-focused environment. "The next phrase of Singapore's growth will depend on whatever is the next 'new normal', and the quality of life will spur our city's growth," he said.

For ease of doing business, Singapore replaced Hong Kong — which was the previous number one. Singapore's strong performance stemmed from favourable operational risk climate, shareholder protection, ease of starting a business, intellectual property protection and low tax rate.

For transportation and infrastructure, Singapore ranked first due to its quality and availability of housing, efficiency, reliability and safety of its public transport system.