Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych has said that the country’s preparations to host Euro 2012 require at least 30 billion Ukrainian hryvnias ($3.8 billion) this year.

Recently inaugurated as president, Yanukovych revealed that failure to recruit capable contractors meant that the country only used one third of the UAH 9 billion set aside to be spent in preparations last year.

“Today the project has fallen into terrible decay”, he said in a meeting with party leaders and public and political organisations.

The new president has also created an advisory committee to oversee preparation works as a replacement to a similar coordination council set up by the previous government.

March 6, 2010