In recent days several international news agencies reported that the organizers of the exhibition Expo 2020 supported the proposal to postpone the exhibition by one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. After the postponement of Olympic Games 2020 to 2021, the exhibition Expo 2020 remained the last major international event officially planned for 2020.
Here is what the UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation, Director General of the Organizing Bureau Expo 2020 Reem Al Hashimy said about the plans to postpone the exhibition:
«COVID-19 has had a significant impact on many countries, and, therefore, they have expressed the necessity to postpone the opening of Expo 2020 in Dubai for one year to enable them to overcome this problem, – the UAE and Expo 2020 have heard them. And in a spirit of solidarity and unity, at today’s meeting of the Steering Committee, we supported the proposal to consider a one-year postponement»
The final decision as to whether the exhibition will be postponed will be taken in June by the member states of the Paris International Bureau of Exhibitions. It was expected that about 11 million foreign visitors will attend the exhibition of culture, business and technology in Dubai with pavilions from 192 countries, and the economic benefit of the event was to be up to $ 9 billion.
For the SkyWay project, which was to present the string transport pavilion at the exhibition, postponing Expo 2020 would not be a tragedy.
Anatoli Unitsky, the founder of the project, talked about a backup option in case of Expo postponement in his last interview. The plan is that the company will be able to conduct string transport presentations directly at the SkyWay test centre for interested investors and customers.
Even if the exhibition is postponed, this does not cancel the planned development of the string testing centre in Sharjah. According to the plans, the SkyWay center will be supplemented with new types of track structure, rolling stock and infrastructure facilities before the exhibition in Dubai. An additional year may also give time to conclude contracts for targeted projects that will bring the commercial implementation of SkyWay worldwide closer.
