Brazil's sports-related building boom brings growth - and complaints Three times a day, Piaia delivers food to workers there and at several of the 56 construction sites that will give Cuiaba new roads, a trolley and an airport terminal by June 2014. "I never dreamed I'd see this kind of growth," Piaia, 41, said as the aroma of coffee wafted from the kitchen. The Cup is helping me and driving the city's development by years. Brazilian policymakers are betting that the mega soccer tournament and the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro two years later will provide a boost to a national economy whose growth slowed to 0.9 percent last year. That was a far cry from the 7.5 percent growth in gross domestic product in 2010 that had investors pouring into Brazil. The World Cup will require 30 billion reais ($14.5 billion) for stadiums and urban transportation and add 0.4 percent a year to GDP growth through 2019, Brazilian Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo says. The Olympics will cost about the same, and both events will generate 3.6 million short- and long-term jobs by the end of 2014, he says. Brazilian construction firms such as Mendes Junior Engenharia and Odebrecht have won many of the large contracts. Foreign companies are also in on the action, from Los Angeles-based AECOM Technology, which designed the Olympic Park in Rio, to Denham, England-based InterContinental Hotels, which is tapping Brazil's tourism potential. "Without a doubt, these two events will be a window of opportunity for the country to consolidate its tourism image," said Alvaro Diago, chief operations officer of InterContinental in Latin America. The company plans to triple the number of its hotels in Brazil to 39 during the next decade. Brazilian billionaire Investors such as Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista and Los Angeles-based AEG Facilities see opportunities long after the government-estimated 3.7 million visitors for the cup have gone home. They plan to manage new or renovated venues, such as Rio's Maracana Stadium, which holds 79,000 fans and was the largest in the world at the time it was inaugurated in 1950. Batista, whose empire extends from oil to mining and entertainment, saw his net worth fall to $7 billion from $30 billion in mid-2011 after several projects soured, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Foreign investors have already profited from stock purchases of the few publicly traded companies working on the Cup and Olympics, said Eduardo Carlier, a fund manager at the Brazilian unit of London-based Schroders. Construction company Mills Estruturas & Servicos de Engenharia, a Rio-based supplier of scaffolding and concrete, tripled in share value to 35.65 reais on May 27 from 11.80 reais on May 13, 2010.