The British government has claimed that the 2012 summer Olympic Games in London earned the economy a massive £9.9 billion that is greater than the £8.92 billion cost of the games.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said the estimates were made by asking the investor companies whether they would have made the investments if there were no Olympics.
However, his ministryâ„¢s figures are questioned as some of the projects, including a £1 billion planned shopping center in south London, which is miles away from the Olympic site, appear hardly justified as Olympic-related investments.
“The answer we’ve had with a lot of the high-profile investment — like the Malaysians in Battersea Power Station — is that a lot of the key negotiations and support came out of the events that we organized around the Olympics,” Cable told BBC radio.
“Would this have happened anyway? Some of these activities clearly would, but the Olympics were a key catalyst in making those investment decisions real,” he added.
This is while Capital Economics expert Samuel Tombs said the Business Secretary “seems to make some tenuous claims”.
“It’s hard to believe that the Games were the decisive factor in many of the business deals discussed in the report,” he said while stressing the government could have spent the multi-billion-pound Olympic budget elsewhere with better results.
Reports at the time of the Games also suggest the Games failed to boost at least the tourist industry, which was expected to gain the most from the event.
Back in July 2012, TripAdvisor Industry Index showed that 58 percent of all hoteliers and bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation providers described the games as Å“non-events”.
The surveyors said some of the 2,500 accommodation owners even said the Olympics had a negative impact on the industry.
AMR/HE
Republished with permission from: Press TV