IOC pleased with Tokyo's budget cuts, says more possible

International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President John Coates attends a news conference in Tokyo, Japan June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon -

TOKYO (Reuters) - International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President John Coates said on Friday he was pleased with Tokyo's preparations for the 2020 Summer Games, especially trimming more than $2 billion (£1.54 billion) from costs, and pledged that organisers would work for still more cuts.

In September last year, a Tokyo city government panel had warned expenses could balloon to 3 trillion yen. That would have been some four times the estimate Tokyo had made when it won the bidding in 2013, and prompted a worried IOC and local organisers to form a working group on cutting costs.