Saudi Public Investment Fund denies WSJ report claiming $200 billion solar project halted

• 5 years ago (2018-10-02)
• David Flin

Middle East 310 Solar 243

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Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has described a report from the Wall Street Journal that claimed the Kingdom has stopped a plan to build the world’s biggest solar power generation project as “inaccurate”. The Wall Street Journal reported that the $200 billion project with SoftBank has been placed on hold by Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for the PIF said: “The Public Investment Fund continues to work with the SoftBank Vision Fund, and other parties, on a number of large-scale, multi-billion dollar projects relating to the solar industry, which will be announced in due course. The announcement in March 2018 clearly stated that this includes solar generation projects and joint plans to develop large-scale solar panel manufacturing facilities in Saudi Arabia for solar power generation. This will be complemented by R&D and training components. These plans to develop a leading champion for the industry remain on-track and in line with the timeline that would be anticipated for projects of this scale and ambition.”