Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman revealed on Thursday about strategies to turn Riyadh into one of the world's top-10 cities for infrastructure and services.
Saudi Arabia is “aiming to make Riyadh one of the ten largest city economies in the world - today it stands at number 40, the fortieth largest city economy worldwide,” he said on the second day of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference held in the Saudi capital.
“We also aim to increase its residents from 7.5 million residents today to around 15-20 million residents in 2030,” he said in a conversation with former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi.
"We must take care of Riyadh and view it in a special way because it is one of the pillars of economic growth in the Kingdom,” he added.
The Crown Prince also revealed that the Saudi authorities aim for Riyadh to become among the world's most prominent cities in terms of quality of life, tourism and services.
“We are going to announce one of the biggest industrial cities in the world, it has a network of roads all over the Kingdom and linked to GCC countries,” he said.
The fourth edition of the FII forum opened on Wednesday with panels addressing how to rethink the future of the global economy.
The Crown Prince also said on Thursday that Saudi Aramco will hold further share sales.
Aramco completed the world's largest initial public offering in late 2019.
"There will be Aramco share offerings coming in the coming years, and this cash will be transferred to the Public Investment Fund," said Prince Mohammed.
He told Renzi the PIF would invest the proceeds locally and overseas.
The Crown Prince also said that apart from further Aramco share sales proceeds, mega projects PIF is backing in Saudi Arabia such as Red Sea tourism project and NEOM are at zero book value on PIF's books and will generate returns, boosting the fund's asset size.
“I promise everyone that as we offered the optimistic projects in NEOM city, will soon announce the details of the rest of strategies for the Kingdom's regions. They will be optimistic and surprisingly positive for Saudi Arabia and the whole world,” he added.
