Architects competing to design buildings on land that is part of the expanded city territory said costs for enlarging the capital could stretch to more than $200 billion, a news report said Tuesday.
French firm Antoine Grumbach et Associes estimated that 187 billion euros (roughly $227 billion) of investment would be needed to build a new parliamentary center, housing, communications networks and other infrastructure in the areas incorporated into Moscow's city limits, Vedomosti reported.
Other companies gave different estimates, including Spanish architects Ricardo Bofill, which predicted 100 billion euros of costs, and Russia's Architectural Design Studio A.A.Chernikhov, which gave a figure of 86 billion euros.
The project to expand Moscow's territory, initiated by Dmitry Medvedev while president, allocated 144,000 hectares of Moscow region land to the capital on July 1 for a global financial center and a new home for parts of the federal government.
The cost estimates for the expansion program come as city authorities are yet to make their own calculations, Vedomosti wrote, adding that a price tag had only been fixed for the parliamentary center at 350 billion rubles ($10.72 billion).
"It's terrifying to even imagine the costs," a source in City Hall told the business daily.
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