Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, says the government underestimated the cost in hosting the recent inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG).
The initial estimate for the inaugural YOG was S$104 million, but the total cost overshot the original budget by three times to S$387 million.
Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Dr Balakrishnan responded to questions from several MPs on the YOG budget and said: “Our initial budget estimates during the bid phase were inaccurate. This was the first-ever Youth Olympic Games. Quite frankly, both the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and us were starting from scratch.”
He added that the requirements and cost for several major functional areas in hosting the Games were under-budgeted and the finalised specifications and standards for the YOG events were only determined after Singapore won the right to host the Games.
When it became clear that initial cost estimates were wrong, Dr Balakrishan said he was confronted with two questions.
Firstly, if Singapore had known it would cost so much to host the Games, should the Republic have still bid for the Games?
And secondly, did Singapore get value for money from hosting it?
Dr Balakrishnan said the answer to both questions was “yes”.
“Hence we shared this information before the Games, and also ensured that we exercised strict fiscal discipline.”
He cautioned that blindly cutting the budget and delivering a sub-standard Games would not have been the right decision.
“To put things in context, we should look at the two most recent Olympic Games and the next,” he said.
“The YOG was about one-third the scale of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games 2008 which featured 11,000 athletes but Singapore’s projected spending for the YOG was about 10 per cent that of Beijing’s expenditure, which came to S$3.9 billion, excluding capital expenditure.
“Based on recent reports, the provisional budget for the 2012 London Olympics now stands at S$19.2 billion, including infrastructure.”
Dr Balakrishnan said that, at the end of the day, Singapore delivered an inaugural YOG that received high praise from the International Olympic Committee, the international federations, athletes and guests, and that, most importantly, Singaporeans were proud of the collective achievement.
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