Brazil World Cup Preparations on Track, Minister Says

June 15, 2010, 10:07 AM EDT
By Nicky Smith


June 15 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil is on track with its preparations for hosting the 2014 soccer World Cup amid concerns that deadlines may not be met, according to the South American nation's Tourism Minister Luiz Barretto.


"There's always anxiety about the World Cup" and soccer's governing body, FIFA, "gets very anxious," he said in an interview in Johannesburg today. "They had the same attitude towards Germany and the same here" in South Africa. "FIFA set deadlines for the 12 stadia and all the deadlines are being kept to," Barretto said. "So everything is within the deadlines and everything is going as it should."


Brazil, South America's largest economy, expects the 2014 soccer tournament to attract about 500,000 visitors, Jeanine Pires, the president of Embratur, Brazil's tourism authority, said in Johannesburg today. FIFA said it expects about 350,000 people to travel to South Africa for this year's World Cup.


About 5 million tourists visit Brazil each year and this is expected to grow to about 8 million by 2014, Pires said.


Infrastructure Spending


The Brazilian government is investing about 20 billion reais ($11.1 billion) on infrastructure for the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics two years later.


Of this, 11.2 billion reais is being spent on transport infrastructure, 4.8 billion reais on stadiums, 2.5 billion reais on airports, 1 billion on hospitality and 677 million reais on the ports, according to Pires.


The government has budgeted the equivalent of $200 million per stadium, Barretto said. Any additional funding will be met through a combination of money contributed by the host cities or from private investors, he said.


"Building has started already and $5 billion has been made available. Each line of work has its own deadline and period," he said. "The beginning is always difficult." Barretto declined to comment on possible overruns in project costs.


South Africa's budget for its World Cup stadiums grew to 11.5 billion rand ($1.5 billion) from 8.4 billion in 2006. That excludes the 4 billion rand that host cities contributed towards construction costs. Complicated designs and the high price of inputs such as steel were blamed for the additional costs.