NEOM: Construction of Futuristic Saudi Arabian City “Continues to Court Controversy” (Part 1)

It has been a dif­fi­cult year for the con­struc­tion of Sau­di Arabia’s breath­tak­ing futur­is­tic city, NEOM, which aims to embrace elec­tric air taxis. The west­ern main­stream media has cho­sen this extra­or­di­nary project to be its punch bag, eek­ing out both crit­i­cism and con­tro­ver­sy in equal mea­sure.

The onslaught began in April when it was report­ed by U.S media out­lets like bloomberg.com that the now infa­mous LINE project, a USD1.5 tril­lion planned glass-walled metrop­o­lis to stretch for 105 miles across the Sau­di desert and to be com­plet­ed by 2030, was being severe­ly short­ened to just 1.5 miles or a reduc­tion in length of 98.6 per­cent. Pre­sum­ably, the sug­ges­tion: Either the Saud­is were run­ning out of mon­ey or the scheme was so fan­tas­ti­cal the rul­ing sheikhs — final­ly — had seen com­mon sense.

NEOM: A Breath­tak­ing Futur­is­tic Vision Deter­mined to Suc­ceed

Cit­ing “anony­mous sources” with “sup­posed knowl­edge of the mat­ter,” Bloomberg com­ment­ed the Sau­di government’s orig­i­nal plan to have 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in The Line by 2030 was being slashed to 300,000. “As a result,” explained the news out­let, “at least one con­trac­tor has start­ed to dis­miss a por­tion of the work­ers it employs on the site.”

Bloomberg then wrote, “The pull­back on The Line comes as the kingdom’s sov­er­eign wealth fund has yet to approve NEOM’s bud­get for 2024, the peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said. It shows that the finan­cial real­i­ties of the tril­lions of dol­lars of invest­ment are start­ing to cause con­cern at the high­est lev­els of the Sau­di gov­ern­ment as it tries to ful­fil its ambi­tious ‘Vision 2030’ pro­gram, the over­ar­ch­ing ini­tia­tive tasked with diver­si­fy­ing the kingdom’s econ­o­my.” Just to keep the boot in, the arti­cle adds, “Already, offi­cials have said that some of the projects out­lined in that pro­gram will be delayed past 2030.”

Faisal Al Ibrahim, the Sau­di Econ­o­my Min­is­ter, dis­agreed. He respond­ed. “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.”

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Amidst the sweet­est of all ironies, the vast major­i­ty of the mon­ey required to con­struct this green­est of all green build­ing projects comes from the sale of oil. Crit­ics point out its price is close to touch­ing an annu­al low and is below the min­i­mal USD80 that the coun­try needs, some sug­gest, to amass its invest­ment.

After stress­ing The Line enter­prise would be deliv­ered “accord­ing to its intend­ed orig­i­nal scale”, Al Ibrahim explained deci­sions were being made for the pro­jec­t’s most fruit­ful eco­nom­ic influ­ence.

He remarked, “We see feed­back from the mar­ket, we see more inter­est from investors and we’ll always pri­ori­tise for opti­mal eco­nom­ic impact. Today, the econ­o­my in the king­dom is grow­ing faster, but we don’t want to over­heat it.”

Al Ibrahim con­tin­ued, “We don’t wish to deliv­er these projects at the cost of import­ing too much against our own inter­est. We will con­tin­ue con­vey­ing them in a man­ner that meets these pri­or­i­ties, deliv­ers these projects and has the opti­mal healthy impact for our econ­o­my and the healthy non-oil growth with­in it.”

He added, “It is a long-term project that’s mod­u­lar in design and the rest of the mega schemes are there to be deliv­ered for spe­cif­ic impact in spe­cif­ic areas.”

Con­clud­ing, “Keep in mind that these sec­tors didn’t exist in the past. They’re being built from scratch. They require invest­ment and going all in from the gov­ern­ment and the sov­er­eign wealth fund.”

(Cred­it: NEOM)

Odd­ly, this April con­tro­ver­sy first led by Bloomberg has now dis­ap­peared as quick­ly as it appeared.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline

(News Sources: bloomberg.com/cnbc.com)

(Top image: NEOM)

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