BUSINESSES WORK TO WIN SAUDI’S PROJECT

[Anchor Lead]

Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is heading a mega project expected to bring in orders amounting billions of dollars. Korean government and enterprises are pulling all their resources to win Saudi Arabia's flagship Neom City project.

[Pkg]

Saudi Arabia has lofty plans for developing the smart NEOM City. It's a mega construction project to build an artificial city 44 times the size of Seoul at the total cost of roughly 500 billion dollars or 670 trillion won. The massive project for a new smart city is comprised largely of three parts. The Line, a linear city of skyscrapers as tall as Lotte World Tower in Jamsil stretching over the distance of 170 kilometers, roughly the distance from Seoul to Gangneung. Trojena, an eco-friendly mountain resort and the Oxagon, an octagonal smart industrial park built on the sea. NEOM City will be entirely powered only by green energy and robots will be in charge of logistics, security, and household chores. Riyadh's blueprint is to build a smart city incorporating advanced communications networks and cutting-edge technologies such as autonomous driving. Korean businesses are using all means possible to win a large number of deals worth multi-billion dollars. A consortium of Samsung C&T Corporation and Hyundai E&C has already signed a deal to build tunnels for The Line. And Hanmi Global was selected to oversee the project's special program management service. The Korean government is providing full assistance, sending a minister to Saudi Arabia to drum up support for Korean businesses' effort to win related projects.

[Soundbite] Won Hee-ryong(Land minister(Oct. 27)) : "We will do our best to lay the groundwork for the NEOM project worth more than USD 500 bn."

The construction of The Line project already began in October of 2021. NEOM City is expected to be the land of opportunity for Korean companies globally recognized for their technological prowess.