Russia cuts Olympic budget by 15 percent
It looks like the Sochi games might be a somewhat more modest affair than planned: The 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi will cost 15 percent less than originally anticipated as initial budget estimates exaggerated the projected cost, a top official said on Tuesday. […] Russian officials have warned that the country’s ...
It looks like the Sochi games might be a somewhat more modest affair than planned:
The 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi will cost 15 percent less than originally anticipated as initial budget estimates exaggerated the projected cost, a top official said on Tuesday. [...]
It looks like the Sochi games might be a somewhat more modest affair than planned:
The 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi will cost 15 percent less than originally anticipated as initial budget estimates exaggerated the projected cost, a top official said on Tuesday. […]
Russian officials have warned that the country’s budget deficit could reach around 8 percent of GDP in 2009. A deputy minister warned on Tuesday the economy would contract by 2.2 percent in 2009.
Yet to conduct the sports event on the balmy Black Sea coast, Russia needs to spend lavishly on upgrading Soviet-era infrastructure and building new facilities in the hitherto quiet mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana.
The report said local authorities were recently forced to extend tender deadlines for Olympic-related construction contracts due to lack of interest from companies hit by financial difficulties.
Authorities also faced mounting difficulty in acquiring land necessary for construction of Olympic infrastructure in the southern Russian city of Sochi because owners were refusing to sell at prices offered by the government.
Doesn’t seem very encouraging. But given all the ink and pixels that were spilled (including by some of us here) predicting that air pollution and protests would turn the Beijing Games into an embarassing catastrophe for China, I’d be cautious about predicting doom for Sochi quite yet.
ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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