Are you a Manila worker itching to buy a new iPhone?
If so, you would have to save over 10 weeks' worth of income to afford one, UBS' latest Price and Earnings study showed.
An average worker in the Philippine capital city would have to work 435 hours to earn enough money to buy a 16-gb iPhone 4S.
This translates to 9.6 weeks assuming a 45-hour work week.
A worker in Manila would have to endure the longest wait to own Apple's hit mobile phone compared to those in 71 other cities in the report.
A similar level of patience is required to buy Apple's smartphone in Delhi, where a worker needs 369.5 hours' worth of income; Jakarta, 348.5 hours; and Mumbai, 338 hours.
In Zurich, on the other hand, one only has to work 22 hours to be able to buy an iPhone, UBS said.
Only 29.5 hours of work are needed to buy the Apple smartphone in Luxembourg; 32 hours in Chicago; and 32.5 hours in Miami and Sydney.
Manila, however, posted a slightly better performance by not ranking last when it comes to the work time needed to afford a kilogram of rice (28 minutes), a kilogram of bread (70 minutes) and McDonald's Big Mac burger (73 minutes), although the city's performance belonged still to the bottom five.
"A rise in global average wages can be observed compared with 2009. This has had a consistently positive impact on purchasing power for certain goods," UBS said.
The report compares consumers' purchasing power with prices of 122 goods and services for a month until the end of May.
"High absolute prices or low wage levels have only a limited bearing on the prosperity of a city’s population," UBS said.
"It is only by comparing the two figures that we can establish how many goods and services can be purchased with a given level of income," it added.
The highest purchasing power in terms of gross hourly wages was seen in Copenhagen, followed by Zurich, Geneva and Los Angeles.
Workers in Jakarta, Manila, Kiev and Nairobi have the weakest purchasing power.
In terms of wage levels, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen and Oslo topped the list while Delhi, Jakarta, Manila and Mumbai were found at the bottom.
Oslo, Zurich, Tokyo and Geneva posted the highest price levels while goods were cheapest in Delhi, Mumbai, Bucharest and Manila.
Amid questions hurled against its early partial proclamation, the poll body on Friday named three more winning Senate candidates even before it completed its official count.
