Turkmenistan to invest $1.9 billion in ‘Olympic City’

Turkmenistan said on Saturday that it planned to invest an initial $1.9 billion to build a new "Olympic City" sports facility, although the ex-Soviet Central Asian republic has not announced any plans to bid for the games.                                           

A government official who declined to be named said the new complex would comply fully with Olympic Committee requirements for competition at all levels. The plans were announced on the government's website.                                           
 

Local media said Turkey's Polimeks Construction had been chosen to develop the project, which forsees the construction of 30 sports facilities, including a soccer stadium with a capacity of 60,000 people in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat.                                            
Polimeks Construction announced in June that it had submitted a bid to construct a new airport in Ashgabat, a project worth an estimated €1 billion.                                            
 

Turkmenistan, which declared independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, lies on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea and borders Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Kazakhstan.                                           
 

With a population of 6 million, the country has the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas as well as sizeable oil deposits.
 

London will host the 2012 Olympic Games and Rio de Janeiro was chosen in October of last year as the site for the 2016 games.