This week, Saudi Arabia marks its second-ever Saudi Founding Day, which falls on February 22 and commemorates the establishment of the Saudi state.
The Saudi celebrations included fireworks show and music concerts, performed by high-profile singers and music bands.
Sources familiar with the matter confirmed that this year’s celebrations costed the Kingdom SR20 billion as international stars will take part in huge artistic shows from February 22 until February 27 at the Riyadh City Boulevard.
Economic experts have long questioned the heavy spending of MBS over the past years, saying that a fire-hose of investment may transform the kingdom’s economy—or deplete its coffers
Six years ago, almost no one outside Saudi Arabia had heard of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), an entity that held government stakes in blue-chip firms and had fewer employees than a typical supermarket.
Today, it aspires to become the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund. It spent billions last year on foreign investments, buying stakes in Western oil firms and cruise lines and even bidding for Newcastle United, an English football club.
Since MBS took office, Saudi Arabia declared the intention to invest $64 billion into its entertainment industry over the next ten years.
In 2020, Saudi Arabia spent 50 billion riyals ($13.33 billion) on an initiative to promote entertainment, health, sports and education.
Meanwhile, the Saudi public debt has notably increased over the past years since MBS came to power. In 2017, the public debt was $118.2 billion, including $49 billion external public debt.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s dream of a new Saudi reality is just getting weirder. Instead of improving his people’s living situation, MBS continues to spend billions of dollars hosting major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events as a deliberate strategy to deflect his image as a pervasive human rights violator.
This huge spending on unreal projects, while Saudi Arabia’s unemployment and poverty rate continue to rise, sparks widespread controversy in the Kingdom.
In 2016, Saudi Arabia established the General Entertainment Authority in tandem with Vision 2030 – the crown prince’s plan to diversify its economy beyond oil, which accounts for more than half of the government’s revenue. Among its goals was to almost double household spending on cultural and entertainment activities within the kingdom.
Reuters news agency has earlier revealed that NEOM Tech & Digital, a subsidiary of the $500 billion signature NEOM project of the Saudi crown prince, has invested $1 billion in 2022 in AI, including a metaverse platform.
The Wall Street Journal also said that MBS spent $50 million on his accession ceremony.
The paper further revealed that boats carrying some 150 women, from Brazil, Russia and elsewhere, docked in the summer of 2015 at Velaa Private Island, an opulent Maldives resort. Upon arrival, each woman was driven in a golf cart to a clinic, tested for sexually transmitted diseases and settled into a private villa.
For its part, the New York Times said that MBS bought the Chateau Louis XIV for over $300 million in 2015.
The 2015 purchase appears to be one of several extravagant acquisitions — including a $500 million yacht and a $450 million Leonardo da Vinci painting — by a prince who is leading a sweeping crackdown on corruption and self-enrichment by the Saudi elite and preaching fiscal austerity at home, according to the US paper.
