A government official said on Thursday that Saudi Arabia, which has submitted a proposal to host Expo 2030, is moving forward with plans to make its capital Riyadh a significant global city. With a total investment of over $800B, the kingdom hopes to more than quadruple the size and population of its capital city as part of its Vision 2030 plan to modernize the Gulf Arab nation and diversify its economy to wean it from oil export income.
According to Fahd Al-Rasheed, the head of Riyadh’s royal commission, the $400B in current development spending in the city of eight million people dwarfs the $8B cost of building the Expo site. “We are building the largest transport network in the world, we are building the largest airport in the world, and over 30 mega-projects as we speak are being constructed, so the city is a hive of economic activity,” Al-Rasheed told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The build-up, which includes an additional 120,000 hotel rooms by 2030, was required regardless of whether Riyadh were to be awarded the privilege to host the Expo, he said. In November, the nation that will host the 2030 World Expo is anticipated to be chosen. Along with Odessa in Ukraine, Busan in South Korea, and Rome in Italy, Riyadh is a rival city. Saudi Arabia will be next, after the United Arab Emirates, as the second Arab nation to host Expo if its application is successful.
