Riga, April 1 (LETA) - The government on Tuesday approved the reallocation of funding amounting to EUR 127,542 in the budget of the Education and Science Ministry to cover the costs of organizing international sports events in Latvia this year.

The ministry mentioned the BMX European Championships organized by the Latvian Cycling Federation as one of the international sports competitions that will benefit from the reallocated funding. The event is scheduled to take place in Valmiera in August this year.

Currently, 92 accredited federations have been earmarked for grants to support sports organizations, programs and events, totaling EUR 6.016 million. At the same time, this is not enough to meet the federations' requests and to finance the organization of international sport events of public importance in Latvia this year, the ministry said.

This year, EUR 5.47 million have been earmarked for the core and priority activities of sports federations, but federations have requested three times as much funding. The requests for federations in operational areas exceed the foreseen funding by EUR 182,641.

This year, EUR 416,000 are earmarked to support sports programs and events. The call for proposals has not yet closed, but it is already evident that the federations' requests will "far exceed" them, the ministry noted.

Last year, 64 applications were received from sports federations, but only 27 sports competitions and events could be partly funded.