AB

20 Focus | Olympics
Rio carnival
Since being awarded the 2016 Games in 2009, Brazil’s economic position has changed.
How has it coped with the arrangements in financially restrained times?
With the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games
due to start in August, Brazil is hoping that a
financial crisis and a dramatic cost-cutting of the
Games budget will all be forgotten once the two-week
festival of sport gets under way.
During the countdown to the Games, Brazil has been in
perhaps the most vulnerable financial situation of any Olympic
host nation in recent history, as well as being plagued by political
instability and health problems.
In May, Dilma Rousseff was stripped of her presidential duties
for up to six months after the Senate voted for an impeachment
trial. In the same month, 150 top scientists wrote to the World
Health Organisation asking for the Games to be postponed
because of the dengue-like Zika virus,
linked to a surge of birth defects.
However, the WHO responded by
saying there was no public health
justification for doing this.
Since Rio de Janeiro won the
Games in 2009, Brazil has gone
from boom to bust. A year after the
Games were awarded, the Brazilian
economy was growing at 7.5%, but
by last year it had contracted by
3.8%. As a result, numerous reports
suggest the operating budget for the
Rio 2016 Olympic and
Paralympic Games in numbers
Dates 5-21 August (7-18 September,
Paralympic Games)
Sports 42
Events 306
Venues 37
Countries competing 206
Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games has been reduced by an
estimated US$500m.
However, a spokesman for Rio 2016, which gets under way on
5 August, maintains that the operating budget, which stands at
US$1.85bn, has only been reduced by 10% – closer to US$185m.
Whatever the actual figure – accounts are not made available
to the public – approximately 80% of the costs will be met by the
state, meaning cuts have been evident across the board.
Plans for a temporary, floating 4,000 capacity stand at the
Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, which will host the rowing event, have
been shelved. At the swimming venue in the Olympics Aquatics
Stadium in Barra, several thousand seats have been slashed, while
the world governing body for sailing was told some time ago that
the bleachers (raised, tiered benches
for spectators) it wanted have been
ruled out.
Organisers plan to deploy 60,000
security personnel for the Games.
The security operation is larger than
the 40,000 at the London Games,
but smaller than the 75,000-strong in
Athens – at a time when organisers
were worried about terrorism
following the 9/11 attacks in New York
in 2001. The Rio security operation
is expected to cost US$200m,
Accounting and Business 07/2016