The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality is confident that the 2010 World Cup multipurpose stadium will get the thumbs-up at next week‘s 2010 local organising committee meeting in Johannesburg.

This after a Fifa delegation and members of the 2010 local organising committee paid a brief visit to the stadium site on Wednesday.

Municipal manager Graham Richards said the committee was on a routine visit to the city.

He said three Fifa officials were in the country and had decided to visit some stadiums. The municipality had made a presentation on the progress of the stadium‘s construction.

Committee head Danny Jordaan said a progress report would be submitted to his board.

“Based on what we saw, things are going well. We will see what the board says.”

He said the stadium was scheduled to be completed by December and that was when the board would see whether the city would host Confederations Cup matches in 2009 and 2010 World Cup games.

The meeting was attended by committee and Fifa officials and municipal officials.

Richards said that construction of the stadium was on track and they were ready to report on its progress at the local organising committee‘s board meeting on March 4.

In her state of the city address last week, mayor Nondumiso Maphazi said the construction of the stadium had injected R1,5-billion into the local economy, close to 6000 jobs had been created directly or indirectly and transport infrastructure had produced a “surge” of more than R500-million.