By Paul Nicholson
August 5 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has reacted quickly to comments coming from Russian construction company Stroitransgaz, owned by Gennadiy Timchenko, which said that the company would pull out of the build of the stadiums in Volgograd and in Nizhniy Novgorod if the government did not increase the budget available.
Timchenko said that the budget needs to increase from the current 15 billion rubles ($419 million) to at least 17 billion rubles ($475 million).
Timchenko said: “It is planned to allocate 24 billion rubles ($670 million) for the arena in Kaliningrad, 19 billion rubles ($530 million) for the one in Rostov-on-Don and RUB 17 billionn for Samara’s, while for Nizhniy Novgorod and Volgograd, where we would have to build, there is only 15 billion rubles…We can not fit into the proposed estimates and Stroitransgaz will not work for a loss. We will not build for such money.”
But Mutko was quick to step in to say that speculation on the budgets was still too early until the government inspectors had completed a full evaluation of the build costs.
He said that so far the review had only been concluded for one stadium in Samara, where construction has now started. Costs are expected to be 15 billion rubles.
As regards the stadiums in Kaliningrad, Rostov on Don and Yekaterinburg, mutko said that their construction is more complicated than the others. In Kaliningrad and Rostov on Don there are difficulties with the foundations, while Yekaterinburg’s stadium will need to be reconstructed. hence why these arenas could be more expensive.
Mutko said that the other stadia are standard designs and should fall within the standard price ranges discussed..
The construction of Volgograd stadium is to begin this year. Initially under threat of losing it host status, Mutko announced earlier this week that Volgograd would remain as a venue.
Meanwhile a survey of public opinion in Yekaterinburg regarding holding the 2018 World Cup in the capital of Urals returned an overwhelming positive response for the World Cup, though no detail of the size of the sample or how it was conducted was available.
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