Neom: stop Saudi Arabia’s pharaonic dreams?

Saudi Arabia has scaled back its ambitions for the Neom megacity project, reducing its population target from 1.5 million to 300,000 by 2030.

The 170km rectilinear city, known as The Line, is now expected to have only 2.4km of it completed by 2030. The scaling back of the megacity project raises questions about Saudi Arabia's ambitious 2030 vision.

This strategic choice is attributed to budgetary constraints, with the Public Investment Fund's cash reserves falling to $15 billion in September 2023. Saudi Arabia has scaled back some of its ambitions for the Neom desert megacity, according to a Bloomberg article . The proposed $1.5 trillion megacity, which organizers say will be 33 times larger than New York City, was supposed to include a 170km rectilinear city.

At the time of The Line's launch in 2021, the Saudi government announced that 1.5 million people would live in the city by 2030. Officials now predict there will be fewer than 300,000 residents by then, according to a source cited by Bloomberg. The source said officials expect only 2.4km of the 170km city to be completed by 2030. As a result of the downsizing, a contractor has laid off some of the workers it employs on site, according to a document seen by Bloomberg.
Neom – part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 strategy to diversify the economy and move away from oil dependence – is under construction in the northwestern province of Tabuk.

Middle East Eye reported last year that construction of The Line was underway, based on satellite imagery.

“The Line” is expected to have no cars or roads and a high-speed rail service running through the city, as announced three years ago by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Two parallel, mirror-image buildings, almost 500 meters high and 120 km wide, are also planned as part of the project, according to drawings unveiled in 2022.

In addition to the horizontal city, Neom is said to also include an eight-sided city floating on water, a ski resort with a folded vertical village, and a luxury resort island on the Red Sea called Sindalah. The Sindalah project is scheduled to open later this year.

Sources told Bloomberg that work was continuing on other parts of the Neom project and that Saudi officials still supported The Line's overall goals.

The sources added that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which is providing the bulk of the financing for the project, has yet to confirm its 2024 budget for Neom.

The scaling back of the megacity project comes as the Public Investment Fund's cash reserves fell to $15 billion in September, the lowest levels since 2020.

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The article Neom: stop Saudi Arabia's pharaonic dreams? comes from Economic Scenarios .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/neom-stop-ai-sogni-faraonici-dellarabia-saudita/ on Fri, 12 Apr 2024 05:15:13 +0000.