Sebastian Usher

These are essentially being financed by the PIF.

This is a private investment fund, which is essentially under the personal control of Mohammed bin Salman, but spread across all of these extraordinary countries.

projects.

It's becoming difficult, it seems, to actually be able to pursue some of them.

Oil prices are not what they were.

So I think that is also a cold shower of reality.

But there is still a lot of modernisation going on in Saudi Arabia's capital city.

Riyadh, compared to how it was 20 years ago, is just a completely different city, bursting with entertainment, whereas once it was a wasteland.

There was nothing.

There'd be restaurants you could go to, but it'd be segregated.

There would be no public entertainment spaces, essentially.

Now it's full of them.

So that has been delivered on.

Major sporting events have attracted people to come on visa specifically for those events.

But it's these mega projects.

This ski resort that was going to be built was meant to be ready in 2029 for the Asia Winter Games.

Now is being delayed.

The line.

This was a city which was essentially going to be half a kilometre skyscrapers facing each other for 170 kilometres through the desert.

It never looked like it was going to happen.