Shenzhen government has denied a report that calculated the city had splurged more than 300 billion yuan ($46.4 billion) on the 26th Summer Universiade Shenzhen that closed on Tuesday.
The Beijing-based China Times published an article Friday arguing Shenzhen had invested too much money in the world universities sports meet, and arguing that because of the huge investment, Shenzhen, one of a few cities with financial surplus on Chinese mainland, had fallen into deficit.
In the article, the newspaper counted the cost supplied by different government departments of Shenzhen to reach the 300 billion yuan total, including at least 200 billion yuan used in constructing the subway system and about 100 billion yuan on comprehensive renewal of the city.
An official of the Finance Commission of Shenzhen soon denounced the report through a Sunday interview on the official sznews.com news website of the city, but did not say how much the city had actually spent.
“The exact spending on the Universiade is not known now,” the unnamed official in charge of the commission said in the website report “and after the meeting, the government will surely release the statistics and publish it to the public in time.”
The 300 billion yuan figure for Universiade was “not so correct,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying. “People might get the wrong idea that all the money spent was only spent on hosting the sports meeting.”
The city’s investment should be calculated according to various standards including investment over one year or multiple years, business inputs or financial investments and infrastructure investment or sports meeting investments, the official said.
Investment in people’s livelihood and infrastructure should not be included in Universiade investment, as if there had been no such meeting, the city would still have spent cash on elevating its image to an international influential city, according to the source.
The city would publish audit results “at an appropriate time,” Wang Rong, Party chief of Shenzhen was quoted as saying by the China Times.
Global Times