A conceptual image of the city of Neom, also called “The Line”. Neom
Saudi Arabia has cut population estimates for its $500 billion Neom project.
The government hoped the futuristic city “The Line” would be home to 1.5 million people by 2030.
Now fewer than 300,000 people are expected to live there by then, authorities said, according to Bloomberg.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
Saudi Arabia has cut estimates for the number of people expected to live in its Neom megacity project by 2030.
How Bloomberg reported that the government wanted to allow 1.5 million residents to move into the futuristic city “The Line” by then. But that number will likely be less than 300,000, the Bloomberg report said, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.
Billed as a “cognitive city,” “The Line” will stretch across 170 kilometers of desert to the Red Sea in northwestern Saudi Arabia. But only 2.4 kilometers of it is scheduled to be completed by 2030, the person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Neom is part of the Saudi crown prince’s propaganda and economic offensive
The $500 billion megacity Neomwhich will cover an area of 26,500 square kilometers, is part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil and towards technology and innovation.
However, Neom is just one of several “gigaprojects” being implemented as part of this plan. The Public Investment Fund (PIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, has long borne the heavy financial burden posed by such projects, estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars each.
However, in January, the PIF said its cash balance in September was at its lowest level since December 2020 sunk was, as the “Wall Street Journal” reported.
This forced the government to resort to a tactic it hasn’t used in a long time to increase its resources: borrowing, the report said. It was also reported that the kingdom plans to do so this year more shares in the state oil company Saudi Aramco too sell.
Saudi Arabia invests billions in sport
In addition to these megaprojects, Saudi Arabia has also poured money into other areas such as sports.
Der „Guardian“ estimated in July 2023 that the kingdom has spent at least $6.3 billion on sports deals since 2021, from financing a gigantic merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to poaching a number of world footballers from European leagues with huge salaries.
“It’s amazing what’s being tried here,” Tim Callen, a visiting scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told the WSJ.
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