Board of Audit to screen Olympic budget

The checkup will be conducted not only on the direct expenses of hosting the games but also on any Olympics-related projects carried out by ministries and agencies with the aim of preventing an inflation in the number of projects launched under the pretext of the games while actually having little to do with them.

The board will take the unusual step of submitting to the Diet in summer 2018 an interim report of a checkup carried out in fiscal 2017. The board hopes this will have a positive influence on future budget drafts.

The board’s screening covers not just ministries and agencies, but also the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) and the Japan Sport Council (JSC) and other institutions. Although its jurisdiction does not reach local governments such as the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the board will check their expenses through government subsidies or grants given to them. The board will make a public announcement if there are any problems.

The Tokyo Organizing Committee announced this month that the Games would cost an estimated ¥1.6 trillion to ¥1.8 trillion. While the central government, the organizing committee and the Tokyo government will shoulder the expenses based on a cost-sharing framework to be decided, the Board of Audit will check the cost based on how much the central government disburses. 

Apart from operating expenses, the board will screen two types of projects — those that are closely related to the Games such as training athletes and those conducted by ministries and agencies under the pretext of the Games.

The budgets for the first type of projects are compiled by the central government’s Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympic Games Promotion Office as a "budget related to the Games." This fiscal year, a total of ¥32.9 billion was allocated to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry and other ministries.

The second type of projects — infrastructure development, barrier-free measures and promotions to attract foreign tourists to Japan, among others — are expected to cost at least hundreds of billions of yen. However, the promotion office did not include those expenses on the grounds that "those projects have already been implemented under different policy purposes." 

Under these circumstances, the Board of Audit deemed it necessary to check the total budget amount allocated to each ministry and agency, especially for the second part of the projects, and also examine how they are related to the Games.