ATHENS, Nov 12: The total cost for this year's Athens Olympics is nearly 9.0 billion euros, almost double the amount forecast just a year before the Games, Greece's Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis said on Friday.

"The cost of the Games to the budget is close to below 9.0 billion euros," Alogoskoufis told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. The former socialist government that lost elections five months before the August Games had insisted earlier this year the total cost would not significantly exceed 4.6 billion euros.

But years of delays in construction and a huge rise in the security budget dramatically inflated the cost. The security budget for the first Games since the Sep 11, 2001 attacks on the United States spiralled from a projected $125 million in the 1997 bidding file to over $1.2 billion and years of double and triple construction shifts to catch up with schedules further increased costs.

The five candidate cities to host the 2012 Olympics, Paris, London, New York, Madrid and Moscow, must submit their bid books to the International Olympic Committee by Tuesday. -Reuters