Tokyo Governor, Japanese Government Talk Cost Sharing For 2020 Olympic Stadium

The governor of Tokyo and Japan's Olympics minister agreed Wednesday "to set up a working group to consider how the metropolitan government can share the ballooning costs for building the country's new national stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics," according to KYODO. Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe, who has resisted a request from the central government to provide 50B yen ($411.7M) for the stadium construction, told Olympics Minister Toshiaki Endo that Tokyo will "cooperate as much as possible" in discussing the burden sharing. The initial construction costs for the stadium have soared to 252B yen ($2.09B), 90B yen ($750M) more than the initial projection, due to higher labor and materials costs (KYODO, 7/8).