500 Billion $ Project KSA announces independent Neom city

500 Billion $ Project KSA announces independent Neom city 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz on Tuesday pledged a "moderate, open" KSA, breaking with ultra-conservatives in favor of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth.
Prince Mohammed, 32, did not mince words in declaring a new reality for the kingdom, hours after announcing the launch of an independent $500 billion mega city - with 'separate regulation' - along the Red Sea coastline. The 26,500sqkm project, dubbed Neom, includes a business and industrial zone extending into Jordan and Egypt.

"We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he told international investors gathered at an economic forum in Riyadh.
"Seventy per cent of the Saudi population is under 30, and honestly we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today and at once," the Crown Prince said.

"We will end extremism very soon."
Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, said he would see to it his country moved past 1979, a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975.
"We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said.

Neom is the latest project in an ambitious plan to prepare Saudi Arabia for the post-oil era, and follows of plans sell shares in oil giant Saudi Aramco, create the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and lift the long-standing ban on female drivers.
“Neom will be constructed from the ground-up, on greenfield sites, allowing it a unique opportunity to be distinguished from all other places that have been developed and constructed over hundreds of years,” he said.
PIF said in a statement that the first phase of the city would be complete in 2025. “(Neom) seeks to seize the great economic opportunities of the future by investing in them with confidence and vigor,” the investment body said.

“Neom provides a key opportunity to minimize GDP leakage by allowing those that normally would invest outside, to give them an option of investing locally, hence minimizing the GDP exodus that happens because of limited local investment opportunities,” PIF said in a statement.
The Kingdom has established a special authority to oversee Neom.
Wes Schwalje, COO of Dubai-based research and strategy center Tahseen Consulting, said: “Neom is bringing the same level of disruption to urban planning and economic development as Uber has brought to the technology sector. Investment is strongly influenced by stability, openness, and institutional quality.
“With the announcement of Neom, the Public Investment Fund and Saudi Arabia is communicating to the world that the Kingdom is open for business.”