FX.co ★ The decisive goal for the state budget

Seven Russian cities have announced the shortage of municipal budget for the 2018 FIFA World Cup organization. This fact is confirmed by Standard & Poor's.
Only four cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan and Sochi) can finance the World Cup organization by themselves. According to the report, the investments are not that considerable, especially taking into account the fact that the budget was recently allocated for Kazan 2013 Summer Universiade and Sochi 2014 Olympics. These cities have already had the infrastructure and soon they will get an experience of conducting such large-scale events.
The rest of the participating cities will have to take out loans or try getting some money from the federal budget. These loans can result in the debt exceeding the standards. Kaliningrad, Samara, Saransk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don and Volgograd may well become such debtors.
According to Standard & Poor's, the total cost of the organization and realization of the championship is 1,258 trln rubles. Samara needs the biggest sum – 340 bln, Kaliningrad – 200 bln, and Yekaterinburg – 160 bln. As for Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, they will require 100 bln each. Saransk and Kazan estimated their costs at 60 and 50 bln rubles correspondingly, Sochi and Volgograd – at 30 and 40 bln respectively.
The way out of this tricky situation is cutting the budget to 661 bln rubles. That was an estimated cost of the FIFA World Cup, but it might trigger a decrease in the world standards for such events and might ruin the reputation of the host country. Another solution to the problem is increasing the amount of money to 90% as it happened in 2012 for the organization of APEC summit. In September, the officials intended to oblige the regions to raise 311 bln rubles by using their own resources.
However, most of the countries listed above can only count on financial support from the federal budget.