Tokyo Olympics organisers facing six-fold cost blowout

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TOKYO, Dec 19, (Agencies): The Tokyo Olympics 2020 will cost the host organising committee six times more than their original estimate, and come in at around 1.8 trillion yen ($14.85 billion), public broadcaster NHK said on its website on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The cost blow out was caused by unexpected payments for building lanes on highways, as well as rising materials costs and personnel expenses, said NHK.

The Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee will be able to raise only about 450 billion yen from sponsors and ticket sales, which means a shortfall of more than 1 trillion yen, the report said.

The committee had earlier estimated a cost of 300 billion yen for the Summer Games in 2020, but that was optimistic, said NHK.

Total costs for staging the Tokyo Olympics, estimated to be more than 2.1