An Olympic-sized battle: Who’s paying for Tokyo’s 2020 stadium?

TOKYO — Whoever Prime Minister Shinzo Abe picks to oversee the 2020 Olympics is already facing a titanic clash over funding for a US$1.4 billion (S$1.89 billion) stadium.

The Japanese Diet passed a law yesterday (May 27) allowing Mr Abe to bolster his cabinet and appoint a minister to prepare Tokyo for its first Olympics since 1964. Any nominee will be plunged into a ruckus with Tokyo’s governor over how much the wealthy capital should contribute to help the debt-ridden Japanese government pay for a new national stadium.

Tokyo was selected in 2013 to host the Games with a bid that said the budget was guaranteed and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government had already set aside sufficient reserves. The Games were championed by Mr Abe, who’s looking for any way to break a pattern of stagnation in the world’s third-largest economy.

Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe has since balked at paying for the centrepiece stadium after cost estimates ballooned to as much as ¥300 billion (S$3.26 billion), from an initial figure of ¥130 billion. The latest estimates put the cost at about ¥169 billion, after some facilities were trimmed.

Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura, who has until now been Mr Abe’s point person for the Games, wants a ¥50 billion contribution from Tokyo, according to Mr Masuzoe. The governor in a May 26 column for the Gendai Business website called the Education Ministry “useless and irresponsible” and said he wouldn’t comply with the request without more details.

CHANGING PLANS

“Will the building actually be ready in time? Will it have a roof? Will ¥169.2 billion be enough?” Mr Masuzoe wrote in an earlier column. “There are all sorts of doubts.”

Mr Shimomura told reporters last week that several factors including the rising costs of materials and labour, a consumption tax increase and negotiations with contractors over the quality of materials had driven up projections and caused delays. He said fresh details and cost estimates for the stadium would be released by the end of next month.

Mr Toshiaki Endo, a former junior minister in the Education Ministry, will probably be appointed to the new Olympic post next month, Jiji Press reported yesterday.

Japanese architects and conservationists have said the 80,000-seat stadium — designed by award-winning Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid — would be too big for its surroundings in an historic area of central Tokyo. Such opposition failed to prevent the demolition earlier this year of the stadium that served as the main venue for the 1964 Games.

Mr Shimomura said last week that he wants to make some of the seats temporary, and that plans for a retractable roof might have to be dropped to get it ready for a warm-up performance in the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

“We need to stop this obscure and corrupt process whereby things are decided among an inner circle of people in the sports world,” Mr Masuzoe said in his May 26 column. “We need to involve the public, hold a debate and reach a public consensus.” BLOOMBERG