Lithuania: Government agreed to continue national stadium construction

source: ELTA; author: michał

Lithuania: Government agreed to continue national stadium construction It's on its best way to become the world's longest stadium construction project. With groundbreaking back in 1997 it's already 16 year under way and still very far from finished. Now things are hoped to change.

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On Friday the governmental Strategic Committee met and discussed the issue of new national stadium. Finance Minister Rimantas Šadžius presented calculations suggesting the project began back in 1997 (and abandoned a few times since, last time in 2010) should be continued.

According to Lithuania's Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius, such a decision was made having got familiar with the presented calculations. The Ministry of Finance was charged with the duty to arrange the documents, to turn to the European Commission (EC) and to ask about the possibility to fund the project as the higher-value project (as a €50 million project).

Resuming and finishing the work, so far worth some LTL 100 million (€28.9m / $39m), is expected to cost LTL 270 million (€78.2m / $105.5m). Further LTL 100 million is to be spent on surrounding infrastructure.

Should the project go ahead as planned, a new 25,000-seater for football and athletics should be opened in 2016.

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