Football story by Carl Anders, Fri, 16 Dec 2005 21:32:00 GMT


LONDON - Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has vowed to see to it that the benefits of the London Olympics in 2012 are equally distributed in the country. Her message came after a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed that although London would benefit to the tune of £5.9 billion as far as GDP was concerned, other regions stood to lose as much as £2.8 billion.

The report was commissioned by the Government to look onto the regional impact of the Olympics. It was carried out on behalf of Ms Jowell's department and the London Development Agency. Alarmed by the report, Jowell has promised to institute urgent measures. "You cannot take these figures as the likely result of the 2012 games - because they are based on a 'do nothing' scenario. If you simply allow events to take their course then this could be the outcome," she commented.

She promised that the Government would be proactive in ensuring that the entire country reaped the benefits of the Olympics windfall, "It takes as its starting point what would happen if government and 2012 stakeholders sat on the sidelines and did nothing to spread the benefits from the games," Ms Jowell said.

"That's a really useful place to begin - much better than making unrealistic claims from the outset and becoming complacent." She added that the main reason for the estimated loss is that people will be coming to London in search of jobs and hence other regions will experience a halt in economic activity.

“Because £5.9 billion is being spent in London, part of that total sum is not being spent in other parts of the country," she acknowledged. However, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has called on a meeting in June next year outside the capital to discuss how businesses can make the most of the Olympics.

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