Organizers of the Tokyo Olympics reached a broad agreement Wednesday on the allocation of costs for the 2020 Games with the metropolitan, national and local governments of the seven prefectures and four other cities hosting events. Governments outside Tokyo that are to host competitions agreed on basic principles concerning cost sharing. Yoshiro Mori, the head of the organizing committee, said the agreement was a step forward. ''I think our preparation has been at least one year behind,'' Mori said. ''We want to speed up the process now so that we can catch up.'' The seven prefectures hosting events are Hokkaido, Miyagi, Fukushima, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa and Shizuoka. The four other cities are Sapporo, Saitama, Chiba and Yokohama. Representatives from seven prefectures expressed satisfaction that the organizing committee and Tokyo Metropolitan Government will pay for expenditures to build temporary facilities for venues outside the capital. Local governments had previously objected to the idea that they would have to shoulder part of the costs to build temporary facilities. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said the broad agreement was ''a big step forward'' that would allow stakeholders to accelerate preparations toward staging a successful Olympics in 2020. ''With the games coming up in three years, we have to rush our preparation,'' Koike said. All the parties additionally agreed to set up a management committee for collaborative projects which aims to further reduce costs. The committee will regularly review the specific tasks related to games preparation and operation. Organizers announced in December a rough estimate for the total cost of hosting the games of between 1.6 and 1.8 trillion yen ($13-$15 billion). (For more sports news and updates, follow Ahram Online Sports on Twitter at @AO_Sports and on Facebook at AhramOnlineSports.)
