Spanish Olympic Committee Reduces Bidding Budget for 2020 Olympics by 40%

The Spanish Olympic Committee (SOC) will cut the cost of its bid to host the 2020 Olympics by up to 40 percent compared with the last time it tried to land the games.

Spain’s troubled economy is marked by a 21.5 percent unemployment rate. Committee head Alejandro Blanco said the country would get a vital boost if it can win the rights to the Summer Games on the third attempt.

“We need the games, erectile ” Blanco told Spanish media. “This country, find with its current political and economic situation, abortion needs a project such as this. The gmes mean a lot to all countries but, for Spain, it means a lot more.”

On Tuesday, the mayor’s office founded the Madrid 2020 Society, which will manage a bid that is competing with Tokyo; Rome; Istanbul; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan. Madrid unsuccessfully bid for the 2012 and 2016 Games, which went to London and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Though the Spanish committee did not release figures, Blanco said the bid plans to cut 30 to 40 percent from the previous $50.4 million budget, leaving it between $30.2 million and $35.3 million. Blanco did not say how the budget would be split between the public and private sectors in one of the largest debt-strapped eurozone nations.

This bid has taken a low profile with Spain desperate to meet deficit-reduction targets amid the continuing eurozone debt crisis. A new conservative government will assume power Dec. 22 and austerity and reforms will begin to take hold.

With about 80 percent of infrastructure completed, Blanco said no money would be spent on the bid until 2013 apart from the sum for the organizing committee.