We cannot guarantee Olympic stadium deadline- JAPAN

Japan said Tuesday that it cannot guarantee that the main stadium for the 2020 Games will be completed by January that year as requested by the International Olympic Committee. Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, scrapped Japan’s original plan for the main venue after construction costs ballooned to 252 billion yen (2 billion dollars) from an initially projected 130 billion yen, which provoked public outrage.

Tokyo is expected to come up with a new plan by the end of August this year. “It is going to be April 2020 on a very tight schedule,” Olympic Minister, Toshiaki Endo, said, referring to the estimated completion date, after holding talks with IOC vice president John Coates.

Coates asked Endo to deliver the stadium by January 2020 so the organising committee would have enough time to run a string of tests before the opening of the Tokyo Games in late July that year. “We can ask the contractors to push it, but we have no idea if it’s doable,” Endo said.

Coates met with Endo and Tokyo 2020 Olympics organising committee president, Yoshiro Mori. Coates also said IOC was not demanding the stadium have a minimum capacity of 80,000, which was the number of seats in the original design by Iraqi-British architect, Zaha Hadid

Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/08/japan-we-cannot-guarantee-olympic-stadium-deadline/