The head of a Tokyo panel tasked with "slashing" 2020 Olympics costs said that "poor supervision and a lack of clear authority" is one reason costs for the Games have "soared to more than four times original estimates," according to Elaine Lies of the REUTERS. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike "ordered a review of Olympic expenses." The Tokyo review panel headed by Shinichi Ueyama, also a professor at Tokyo's Keio University, on Tuesday "proposed changes that could cut" as much as 50B yen ($484M) from the total bill. On Wednesday, he "blamed a good part of the situation on a lack of clear oversight of expenses." Ueyama said, "There is no proper mechanism in place to manage the entire budget, a real lack of governance." Ueyama noted that while each organization involved in the Olympics had its own CEO and CFO, "they only oversaw the budget for their own group." He said, "There is nobody who has authority equivalent to a CEO or CFO as there is in a usual company, and this is a source of great concern to us" (REUTERS, 11/2).
BUDGET DRAFT: KYODO reported a draft of the overall budget for the 2020 Olympics "looks like it will be finally made by December," according to the chief auditor. The IOC is "desperate to put a cap on the budget, which has steadily increased" since Tokyo estimated it at 734B yen ($7.1B) in its bid book and has been a "source of public uproar in Japan, so that costs can be properly managed once and for all." The IOC appears to be "fed up with the bickering going back and forth between the organizing committee and the Koike administration, and it would make sense for the IOC to settle it through the decisive meetings in December." Ueyama: "When the first version of the overall budget comes out in December, costs for things like transport and security will be spelled out in detail, because the math has to be done first" (KYODO, 11/2).
