Monday, December 17, 2012

                                                    Source: Google images

Hello, my name is Arton Kukaj. I am a 20 year old student currently residing in the state of New York and I am currently attending Westchester Community College. I wanted to create a blog about the events that are unfolding in Brazil; The 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics that are going to take place in Rio de Janiero. The reasons as to why I wanted to do this is because I am a sports fan like most males around the world. I enjoy sports such as Wrestling and Judo, both sports which are renowned for having many athletes of great caliber compete and growing up in a household where my family are of European background, I grew to love and enjoy the sport of Soccer as well so I am also very interested in the World Cup that will take place in Brazil. Because of these reasons, I felt very interested in doing extensive research about the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup that are going to occur in Brazil back-to-back within a 2 year time frame and what are some of the problems that are currently taking place and what good will come from these events.

Brazil will recieve a great deal of many benefits after the World Cup and Olympics are done with, but before I go on to talk about them, I figure it would be best to talk about how Brazil is currently facing a lot of hurdles as they continue to work on the rebuilding of new stadiums. Brazil is facing pressure from a lot of international sports authorities to clean up its crime-ridden cities and demonstrate a convincing reform of infrastructure-building programs before the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

                                                                        

One of the criticisms that Brazil is facing is that they are reported to spend about 15 billion dollars but they are currently behind schedule in terms of the construction of the new stadiums and the fear that there may not be enough time. FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke is unpopular in Brazilian government circles because of  certain comments he made earlier in the year, for which he apologized after receiving backlash about those comments. Valcke was reported saying in March that Brazil needed a "kick up the backside" to be ready for the 2014 World Cup, but several clarifications later, the rift was healed. Another form of critiscm that Brazil faces is the focus on the security in Brazilian cities after the business capital of Sao Paulo was rocked by gang violence and an equally violent and controversial police response to the wave of violence.

In Rio de Janeiro, authorities are facing difficulties trying to give the city a more positive and peaceful image and there have been signs of very little visible progress on controlling the crime-infested slums seen to be under the thumb of competing crime organizations involved with narcotics, extortion, money laundering and prostitution. Valcke was in the news again when he talked about how the crimes are creating a halt to the development of the projects and may ruin Brazil's image for tourism.  "We are seeing a big wave of crime in Sao Paulo, which is not good for its image or tourism," Valcke said. Another main issue that Brazil is lacking in is their hotel capacities. Valcke also talked about how Brazil's hotel capacity is currently behind seating capacity in stadiums being prepared for the tournaments.

FIFA officials expect at least 500,000 overseas visitors during the World Cup and warn that Brazil may struggle to meet that demand. Valcke also cited much needed improvements in public transport and airport capacity to handle an expected increase in the frequency of flights before and during the World Cup. The sport official's most recent comments were seen by Brazilian analysts as less combative and more conciliatory. "We have now moved from talking about the problems to talking about the solutions. We are able to find and answer the problems," Valcke said.

Whether or not Brazil will be able to handle these situations, nobody knows. Only time will tell, but I would like to shift more towards the future, more specifically, talking about the impacts(mainly economic) that the World Cup and the Olympics will bring. Brazil is one of the fasted growing economies in the world, but like many nations before them, they lack the infrastructures needed(as I mentioned earlier) for many first world nations- railroads, airports, roads and marinas. International sporting events are pretty much seen as a sort of breakthrough for countries who want to show off their new economic power like the Beijing Olympics 2008 and Barcelona in 1992. Brazil certainly belongs to the club: its rapid growth in past decades (see chart 1) has made the country the world’s sixth-largest economy, although growth slowed in 2011

 I talked about earlier the expectations of cost for Brazil in the creation of the new stadiums for these two world renowned events. A study by University of Sao Paulo estimated the infrastructure outlays in Brazil ahead of the 2014 World Cup to be roughly 18 billion in United States Dollar, with 14 billion coming from Brazilian taxpayers’ pockets. The expected outlays devoted to hosting the Olympics are an additional 15 billion, resulting in a total outlay of $33 billion for both sport events. This is large compared to other recent Olympics spending, as chart 2 shows.

 As stated before, there will be great benefits to come from all this.  Brazil's Ministry of Sports(It may not be an independent source) claims 120,000 jobs will be created per year by the preparations for the two big sports events. According to a survey conducted by University of Sao Paulo, the overall gross economic impact of 2016 Olympics is expected to be $51.1 billion in United States Dollar.  Furthermore, according to a study by Ernest & Young, the overall impact of the 2014 World Cup impact is expected to be USD 70 billion from both direct and indirect investments.  That is a total of more than USD 120 billion in gross economic impact from hosting the two events. The impact of the World Cup and the Olympics will be minor, however they will in the long run, hold a large and significant impact to Brazil's economy with the investments in infrastructure and their path to modernezation, which will gain foreign investments. As they continue to improve on their railways, roads and airports, the country will continue to rise economically and will become more and more attractive for people to do business and a lot of Brazil's export products like soy beans and coffee will increase in demand, benefitting Brazil even more. If the World Cup and Olympics become a big success, this will help build Brazil's status as an economic giant and will help build their reputation which will mean more financial benefits for the nation.





Bibliography

Sverrir Sverrisson "The economic impact of Brazil's 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics" TradingFloor.Com 27 August 2012
Andres Rozental "What Hurdles Face Brazil Ahead of the Olympics & World Cup" Brookings  17, August 2012 http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/08/17-brazil-olympics-rozental
UPI.com "Brazil crime clouds World Cup, Olympics" 29, Nov. 2012



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