Slovakia wants to co-organise the Winter Olympic Games together neighbouring Poland. It plans to spend approximately €481,000 by the end of July 2015 on preparatory work for its joint bid with Poland to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Krakow, according to a report on the progress of the bid’s preparations that was approved by the government on October 30.
“These resources aren’t included in either the budgetary chapter of the [Education] Ministry, or the [Office] of the Government Proxy for Youth and Sport, so it will be necessary to approve the allocation of such extra resources in addition to the planned budget of the education sector for 2014-15,” reads the document drafted by the Education, Science, Research and Sport Ministry. The ministry calculated that as much as 40 percent of all the expenditures will be consumed by services related to the preparatory work, such as analyses, expert studies and assessment work; while another 35 percent will go to travel expenses and expenditures associated with attending various meetings.
The ministry also claims that the project won’t entail any demanding construction work on sporting venues and stadiums. “All that’s needed are investments in the modernisation and reconstruction of already existing facilities, or in new venues built in place of already existing facilities and sports complexes,” reads the report a quoted by the TASR newswire.
The final decision to bid to host the games in the Polish city of Krakow was reached at a joint session of a Polish-Slovak committee commissioned with drawing up the bid in Demänovská Dolina in the Žilina Region in August. The project counts on Slovakia’s ski resort of Jasná in the Low Tatras becoming the venue for the alpine disciplines during the games. Krakow is expected to announce its official bid to host the Winter Olympics in co-operation with Slovakia on November 14, with the bid due to be submitted in March 2014.
Finance Minister Peter Kažimír said after government session on October 30 that the money allocated for hosting part of the Games at Jasná will be spent solely on elements that will continue to be used after the event is over, including roads and sports facilities. He said that he can’t predict what the actual expenditures for carrying out the Olympics would amount to, however.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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