Saudi Arabia's NEOM gigaproject, a futuristic region being built in the desert, is a "generational investment" with a long timeline, the country's investment minister told Reuters on Monday, adding that foreign investment will pick up pace.

The world's top oil exporter has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into development projects through the kingdom's $925 billion sovereign fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), as it undergoes an economic agenda dubbed Vision 2030 to cut dependence on fossil fuels.

"NEOM was not meant to be a two-year investable opportunity. If anybody expected NEOM to be foreign investment in two, three or five years, then they have gotten (it) wrong - it's a generational investment," Minister Khalid al-Falih said on the sidelines of the World Investment Conference in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia, which is racing to attract $100 billion in annual foreign direct investment by the turn of the decade - reaching about a quarter of that in 2023 - has recently seen more co-investment deals between state entities and foreign investors.

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