The Dystopian Realtiy of a Rich Man's Utopia

When the Crown Prince took de facto leadership of the kingdom back in 2016, he promised a massive shift from the oil-dependent economy. He developed a plan to diversify the economy now famously known as Vision 2030. The diversification goal was long overdue given the volatility of oil prices and the increased competition in oil production mainly from North America. I was pessimistic at the start, and how can you blame me? Oil revenue amounted to 90% of all Saudi revenue in the last decade, it practically runs the country's economic engine. But the looming climate crisis and the increasing budget deficit made me much more perceptible and I found myself rooting for this vision to succeed. Who knows, he might devise a plan to invest in green projects and manufacturing that can promote the use of renewable energy, hire expert urban planners from all around the world to design walkable compact cities with both commercial and social districts, or at least develop an infrastructure plan to repair and upgrade our current failing infrastructure to withhold the extreme heat rising every year. And maybe it will be a positive step toward avoiding the anthropogenic disaster facing our planet. Short after his promises, a series of computer-generated images and videos of sci-fi-looking structures narrated with the cadence of your average IHS commercial released everywhere, made me sigh in disappointment. Instead of having a potential Saudi take on the Green New Deal, the Crown Prince was taking pages right off the UAE playbook, a shift into a hedonistic tourism economy that was somehow worse. Alas, my fleeting moments of wishful thinking were just that, naive hope in our geriatric political system.

Multiple projects with absurd magnitude began their planning phase. From the Muraba, a giant cube in the center of the capital laced with screens everywhere piloted by artificial intelligence to an octagon-shaped city by the Suez Canal looking straight out of a Star Wars straight to DVD rip-off. Most of these cooky projects will be inside a brand new city dubbed NEOM, a futuristic metropolis located in the north-western region of Tabuk. One of NEOM's more recent clownish projects is the Line. A 500M tall linear city spanning a length of 170 KM with a projected population of 9 million residents. It is meant to be a condensed city where residents live within small proximity of each other. Its goal is to promote a new green lifestyle by relying on renewable tech and ditching the car-dependent infrastructure that plagued the country in favor of a more walkable urban design. And all of this will be achieved with a dumbfounding budget of 500 billion taxpayer Dollars. To the surprise of nobody the initial goal of completing 170km of the construction, housing 1.5 million residents by 2030 will not be met. Instead, it's been reduced to a measly 2.4km housing only 300,000. That's almost 1% of the set goal. The project has been ill-conceived from the get-go. It took me more time to think about my high school project than it took Masayoshi Son a Japanese investor to convince the Crown Prince of the plausibility of this project and to throw 500 billion dollars into it. These outlandish and unsound investments seem constant in this current administration. A reported loss of 16 billion dollars in 2022 from a stake in SoftBank, a Japanese wealth management firm with a less-than-stellar reputation. Or the millions of dollars dumped into the looney Hyperloop technology pioneered by none other than the demented billionaire Elon Musk. These flops made investors wary of striking deals with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) or investing in Tadawul (The Saudi Stock Exchange) in fear of mismanaging their wealth or the ability of the Saudi economy to generate any substantial return on their investments. As reported by Reuters, investors pulled record sums at the end of 2022, the largest capital flight to happen in the kingdom in years. While the exact reason for the massive pullout is debatable, it is not too far-reaching to attribute it to the scattered and unfocused goals of the kingdom.

Economists anticipated the shortcomings of the 2030 diversification plans early on, most notably the Saudi economist Esam Alzamil. He spoke extensively about the importance of building a robust economic climate that promotes manufacturing to increase our non-oil exports as an antidote to the increasing deficit. He also saw any other goal in the vision as distracting and possibly a hindrance to the plan. A hindrance that would cost the state and consequently the people. Esam was sentenced to jail for 15 years in 2020 for the crime of offering analysis to the public. Surprisingly jailing economists did not stop their predictions from taking place, and costs financial and social were intensifying year over year. The deficit reached all-time highs in the period between 2015 and 2023, and it's expected to extend even further in 2024, projected to reach 32 billion dollars according to the Ministry of Finance. Couple that with the Ministry's recent announcement of only 0.8% expected GDP growth this year, a far cry from the initial goal of 4.4% GDP growth. These amounting costs were indirectly passed down and felt greatly by households. The first cost was the unexpected privatization of Saudi Aramco in 2021. The IPO turned Aramco into a shareholder company where 95% of the shares were non-issued and held by the PIF, while the remaining 5% were to be floated in the private market. The goal is to receive a cash injection of 100 billion dollars from the private market based on the state's own valuation of Aramco which stood at 2 trillion dollars. Given the volatility of the market, a 2 trillion seemed too optimistic at the time, and it fell short of that in its initial offering. A short-term cash injection was chosen instead of a long-term firm control over the country's biggest asset, aside from the chaotic restructuring that resulted in some employee layoffs. Handing partial control of a nationalized entity to private investors has a devastating track record historically. What benefits the public does not align with increasing shareholders' value, this creates a rift in the kingdom's number one funding mechanism, and it further scatters the focus of its administration. Instead of using Aramco's funds to help build a public school like it used to do, now it might opt for a more shareholder-friendly direction and engage in dividend payments or stock buybacks. While 5% floated shares means less inclination to entertain this direction, nevertheless, the PIF already reported a possibility of selling more shares to private investors when the time is right.

The second way these costs were passed down to the public, was by the recent announcement of the controversial decision by the Saudi General Organization for Social Insurance to raise the retirement age for new civil employees. The normal retirement age now stands at 65 instead of 60 years or after 30 years of service instead of 25, the increase will be gradual but devastating for our young workforce. This decision was just a matter of time given the tendency for developed nations' demographics to age out of the workforce and the refusal of governments like in Europe and East Asia to cover that gap with state funding, but it came as a shock to the Saudi public and understandably so. In a country like France where the dependency ratio is at 64.05% (the ratio of dependents to the working population) as of 2023, riots broke out protesting the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64. Compare that to Saudi where we stand at a much more sustainable dependency ratio of only 40.15% as of 2023 and a young demographic where 63% of Saudis are under the age of 30, yet the increase in the retirement age came in too early and more severe. Debates on how this increase should be carried out were voiced by the public and the media alike but rarely was the red flag of imposing a retirement age increase on such a young demographic cited.

Some were less fortunate, as these large-scale megaprojects and plans cost some Saudis and immigrant workers their homes and in some cases their lives. During the construction of these projects, huge swaths of land needed to be cleared out to make way for the 'future'. Around 60 districts were targeted in the western region and more than half a million were impacted according to Amnesty International. The Saudi Gazette newspaper stated that the government is preparing a compensation package for those who were evicted, yet the package excludes non-Saudis who constitute 47% of the impacted and according to the Saudi authorities, these reparations will only be processed once the demolition operations are completely over. Combined with the belated notice of eviction that came in only 24 hours before demolition for some houses, families affected felt they had little to no time to relocate. Some individuals spoke to the media voicing their frustrations, expressing the fact that no amount of money will convince some to leave. Similar demolition plans took place up north to prepare for the construction of NEOM and the dubious assemblage of projects within it. One tribe who resided north for decades if not centuries was naturally opposed to its displacement. Al-Huwaitat tribe lived in small villages in the city of Tabuk and were labeled 'rebels' for refusing to give up their land. According to a former official, the Saudi authorities licensed lethal measures to ensure a timely process. Many of the tribesmen were jailed and one Abdulrahim Al-Huwaitat who documented his protest on social media was shot dead shortly after for refusing to leave his home. The incident was reported by various human rights organizations but the silence of the state and the numerous global companies involved in the NEOM project was deafening.

Some might get defensive whenever an analyst or a critic shoots down the hype for the 2030 vision, or when a human-rights activist sheds light on the violations of people's rights that occurred in the name of that vision. I will always champion progress and support well-thought-out plans that will leap my country forward. But as time passes and we observe the impacts of the vision it becomes clearer and clearer that it unfortunately another false promise disguised by the veneer of futuristic utopian marketing campaigns, that promise an improved quality of life and strong chances of upward social mobility for the masses. But when you scratch the surface, you see an exclusive club for the rich and powerful indulging in their fantasy world where we get to look from the outside. It is our duty then, as Saudi citizens to demand more and have our voices be part of both the conception and the construction of these economic plans. To be in the forefront and not an afterthought. Only then, can progress be made.