Today, a crane being used to prepare Sao Paolo’s Arena Corinthians for next summer’s World Cup collapsed, killing at least three workers.
News of the accident comes the same day the governmentreleased a new estimate for the cost of building the World Cup stadiums, which is some $421 million larger than previously budgeted:
The overall cost of the games is estimated at $11.18 billion, slightly higher than expected but not as big as it might have been after the country cancelled several transportation infrastructure projects they feared would not be finished before the 2014 games. But that won’t improve the mood in Brazil, where protestors took to the streets during this past summer’s Confederations Cup, a kind of shake-down run for the World Cup, in part because of high transportation costs.
+
Brazil’s economy has been touch-and-go in recent months, as investors fear that that president Dilma Rousseff won’t be be able to overcome structural challenges and public corruption; even former soccer stars are critical of putting money into international athletics before development. While there has been some good news about the country’s economy in recent months, today’s unfortunate crane accident puts an unwelcome exclamation point on concerns about the country’s plans to host the cup—especially when few such projects end up paying off.
No comments:
Post a Comment