The Associated Press quoted in a new report some observers as saying that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) hopes the city will become a skyline-studded Saudi version of Dubai that will offer the kingdom jobs and cement a future beyond its vast crude oil reserves.
It also would reframe a rule so far colored by the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the kingdom’s ongoing intervention in the war in Yemen, the AP added
“Some people say the idea of the Neom city project is too utopian and doubt whether it can be really established,” said Paik Seunghoon, principal researcher at the Institute of Middle East Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. “But it’s one of the projects that Prince (Mohammed) is pushing hard so that he will try to have (the Neom project) running to some extent.”
Joo Won, deputy director at the Seoul-based Hyundai Research Institute, noted that there have been “more negative views toward the project” than positive ones.
“It’s a matter of financial resources. Saudi Arabia needs money to build such a city. During the period of high oil prices like these days, they can afford it. But oil prices would go down one day and the project could stop,” Joo said.
MBS Draining Saudi Resources
For its part, Bloomberg revealed that Neom appears to be one of the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)’s highest priorities, and the Saudi state is devoting immense resources to making it a reality.
The paper pointed out that Neom offered tax-free salaries of $700,000 to $900,000 for some senior expatriates, more than 20 times the income of the average Saudi, and a broad range of other perks.
Bloomberg went on charging that Neom has become something of a full-employment guarantee for international architects, futurists, and even Hollywood production designers, each taking a cut of Saudi Arabia’s petroleum riches in exchange for work that some strongly suspect will never be used and for designs that never see the light of day.
Senior executives on Neom’s leadership team, composed of roughly 20 Saudis and foreigners, are being paid about $1.1 million each annually, according to internal documents reported by the Wall Street Journal last month.
In another report, Bloomberg revealed that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is working with Lazard (LAZ.N) on funding options and a potential initial public offering of Masar, a $27 billion mega project in the holy city of Mecca.
Bloomberg first reported Lazard was advising the sovereign wealth fund on NEOM.
Lazard has been scouting for deals in the kingdom ever since it poached Citigroup Saudi Arabia’s chief executive Wassim Al-Khatib, who played a key role in Aramco’s record $29.4 billion initial public offering in 2019.
The project is being developed by Umm Alqura for Development and Construction, a private company with investors that include the PIF, Ministry of Finance, Public Pension Agency, the General Organization for Social Insurance, and the General Authority of Awqaf.
For its part, the Daily Star said that Saudi Arabia’s controversial and grotesquely expensive £830billion hyper city project The Line, which came as part of MBS’ Vision 2030, will remain only in his mind in light of the growing economic challenges.
The project, dubbed The Mirror Line, wouldn’t look out of place in the ill-fated video game Cyberpunk 2077, with giant mirror-covered glass structures and impossible-looking geometry.
For his part, Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling said that everything about Neom — the futuristic city being developed near the shores of the Red Sea by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — seems fantastical.
From flying elevators to 100-mile long skyscrapers to a floating, zero-carbon port, it seems to owe more to Coruscant and Wakanda than to any urban forms outside of science fiction, he wrote.
He further pointed out that the potential folly of the futuristic city Crown Prince Mohammed envisions along the Red Sea isn’t in the financials, it’s in the country’s underlying reality.
“By 2030, MBS expects about 1.5 million people to live in twin horizontal skyscrapers called The Line.Believe it or not, those numbers are not as unimaginable as they seem.”
