Saudi Arabia’s city of the future gets 21 billion riyals investment

SAUDI Arabia’s Neom, an entirely new city being built on the Red Sea coast, has finalised a deal worth more than 21 billion riyals (S$7.54 billion) with a group of local investors, in the third investment to back the kingdom’s most ambitious project to diversify its economy in the past month.

Four local companies will develop temporary housing and facilities for 95,000 people under a public-private partnership deal, according to a statement.

Neom, spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is the biggest project in his plan to diversify the country’s oil-dependent economy. He wants the city to be a showpiece that will transform Saudi Arabia’s economy and serve as a test-bed for technologies that could revolutionise daily life.

Over the past few weeks, it also raised three billion riyals from Riyad Bank to fund the development of an island tourism resort called Sindalah, and completed an US$8.4 billion deal with a group of international and regional banks to build one of the world’s largest green hydrogen plants.

The four firms building the accommodation at Neom are Alfanar Global Development, Almutlaq Real Estate Investment Company, Nesma Holding, and Tamasuk. Nesma was one of a group of contractors that Neom’s owner, the Public Investment Fund, invested in earlier this year as it looked to help boost the industry’s ability to build vast new construction projects. BLOOMBERG