NEOM is again making the rounds in the foreign press, with Investment Minister Khalid Al Falih telling Reuters on the sidelines of the World Investment Conference that the gigaproject is a “generational investment” with an extended timeline that will not be completed in “two, three or five years.”.

Al Falih also added that the megacity was not “100% PIF” and that foreign investment is starting to pick up. “The flywheel is starting and it will gain speed as we go forward, as some of the foundational assets come to the market,” the minister explained.

Asked if PIF will continue to do much of the spending on NEOM until more foreign funds come in, al-Falih said it was not binary.

Saudi Arabia, which is racing to attract $100 billion in annual foreign direct investment by the turn of the decade - reaching about a quarter of that in 2023 - has recently seen more co-investment deals between state entities and foreign investors.

He noted that foreign investors were at times "still looking, still examining, still sometimes questioning," but that now there was confidence in the profitability of investment opportunities and that "the risk-return trade-offs are very, very fair and positive to them."

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