Saudi Arabia has hit back at critics claiming its Neom mega-project will never be finished as it appears on track to smash through its £1.2 trillion budget.
Neom is the world’s largest civil engineering project spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of his Visin 2030 plans.
Little is shared by Saudi authorities on the progress of the city, leading people to believe it might never be completed. In the wake of this criticism, a minister has offered a rare insight on the project’s timeline.
Finance Minister Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Jadaan spoke at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh, revealing that different projects within the city will be finished at different times.
He said: “Neom is a 50-plus-year plan. If anyone is thinking Neom in its grand size is going to be built and operated and making money in five years, that’s foolish. We are not foolish. We are wise people.
“Some projects within Neom will make returns in the short to medium term but this is a very long-term program.”
The flagship project within Neom is The Line – a smart city concentrated within a single building along a straight line, eventually due to house 9 million people within just 13 square miles.
It was hoped that The Line would accommodate 1.5 million people by 2030, but a Bloomberg report earlier this year said the Saudi government had “scaled back its medium-term ambitions”. The number is now reportedly less than 3000,000.
However, Economy and Planning Minister Faisal Al Ibrahim denied that the project had been scaled back, insiting it was “moving full steam ahead”.
He told CNBC: “All projects are moving full steam ahead. We set out to do something unprecedented and we’re doing something unprecedented, and we will deliver something that’s unprecedented.”
There have also been concerns over how Noem is being constructed and by whom, given the ambitious deadlines the Saudi government is working towards.
An ITV documentary titled Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia alleged that 21,000 migrant workers died in the country since projects for Vision 2030 began in 2016.
Civil engineering firms contracted to carry out the works never responded to these allegations, while Saudi authorities called it “misinformation”.
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