UK Olympics Boost
July 21, 2013 by staff
UK Olympics Boost, The UK economy has seen a £9.9bn boost in trade and investment from hosting the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, research suggests.
A report by the government department which promotes UK businesses put new contracts, sales and foreign investment in the last year down to the Games.
But the claims were met with scepticism by some economists and the Federation of Small Businesses.
Government estimates put the cost of hosting the Games at £8.9bn.
‘Creative accounting’
Prime Minister David Cameron said “a lot of deals were done” around the time of the Olympics.
It would be rude to call the benefit numbers flakey. But most economists would say they were deeply speculative, at best.
The point is not that the Games didn’t bring economic benefits – it would be hard for something that cost roughly £9bn not to have any economic benefits. And of course they brought lots of more intangible benefits, for all of us.
But the £9.9bn figure we got today is supposed to be the extra business for UK firms from 2012, in addition to the jobs and income that were directly generated by building the stadium and other investments to prepare for the Games.
To make even a rough guess of the extra business generated, you need to have a sense of what would have happened anyway; what academics would call “the counterfactual”.
They never really provide that in today’s glossy report. The implicit assumption seems to be that – had it not been for the Olympics – that £9bn would simply not have been spent.
The report, for the UK Trade and Investment department (UKTI), said the Olympics resulted in:
Much of the Olympic park and stadium for the Winter Olympics in Russia was “designed and built by British businesses”, Mr Cameron told BBC Radio’s Test Match Special.
“So there’s real jobs, real money in the Olympics if we get it right.”
_________________________________________
Please feel free to send if you have any questions regarding this post , you can contact on
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are that of the authors and not necessarily that of U.S.S.POST.
Comments