Another Neom contract canceled

More gigaprojects blues for contractors: In the second gigaproject-related cancellation that we know of this month, Malaysia’s steel firm Eversendai Corp Bhd said its structural steel contract for Neom’s mountain ski resort, Trojena, has been terminated.

Taking out the trash? The company blamed the war, but we’ve been hearing since lastsummer plans to scale back gigaprojects as part of a recalibration driven by fiscal concerns. (Taking out the trash is a time-honored PR tactic involving dumping out ‘bad news’ during a news cycle when nobody will notice — or late in the afternoon on the last business day of the week.)

Background: Construction on the project, which was initially scheduled to launch in 2026 with an estimated USD 19 bn ticket, has not been going as planned — and the Kingdom recently pulled out from the race to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, which were supposed to be held in a developed Trojena.

One man’s trash is another’s treasure?

Morocco is moving to launch a secondary market for non-performing loans (NPLs) as bad debt levels creep up, in a move designed to get those loans off bank books and free up credit for the private sector. NPLs hit MAD 100 bn by the end of 2025 — roughly 8.2% of total banking assets — and the ratio ticked up to 8.3% in January.

By securitizing and selling these NPLs, Rabat hopes to reduce financial fragmentation and prevent a clogged banking system. The Central Bank of Morocco is trying to engineer a domestic credit recovery through the secondary market, the success of which will serve as a signal to businesses of whether local banks have the appetite to fund the infrastructure projects the IMF is currently touting.

Data point

80% — that’s the drop in Iraq’s southern oil output from pre-war levels, with productionfalling to roughly 800k bbl / d as blocked exports through Hormuz push storage capacity toward critical limits. Basra Oil Company has ordered further cuts at the Rumaila oil field and Zubair oil field.

This pressure was already building: Iraq already slashed nearly 1.5 mn bbl / d on 3 March, forcing the country to later declare force majeure on foreign-operated oilfields as southern production dropped to around 900k bbl / d.

The escape route? Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government have agreed to restart oil exports through Turkey’s Ceyhan port — pushing for more alternative routes.

Jordan’s industrial sector grew 5.2% in 3Q 2025, accelerating nearly two full percentage points from one year earlier. Overall, industrial growth in 2025 was led by construction industries, which grew 830% y-o-y, while mining grew 16%. Industrial exports rose 10.2% y-o-y in 2025 to JOD 8.9 bn, accounting for 92% of total exports during the year.