Norway’s wealth fund, a jumbo piggy bank to be used prudently

OSLO: Norway, which holds legislative elections on Monday, has the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, a piggy bank of nearly US$1 trillion to be saved for rainy days, but also to help finance today’s election promises.

How did a nation of 5.3 million people end up with the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund?

Much can be learned from Aesop’s fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper, about the benefits of planning for the future.

The idea is that oil is a fortuitous natural resource that belongs to all Norwegians, benefitting both current and future generations by financing the expenses of the welfare state.

When Norway’s oil wells one day run dry, Norwegians will still be able to reap the benefits of the oil through the financial gains made by the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), as it is officially known.

Set up in 1990, the Norwegian government made its first deposit into the fund in May 1996 with a modest cheque of less than two billion kroner (about US$305 million).

Today, all of the state’s oil revenues are placed in the fund: taxes, profits from the state’s holdings in oil and gas fields, and dividends from Statoil, owned 67 per cent by the state. Is it ‘open bar’ for politicians? Absolutely not. In 2001, Norway decided that governments could tap the fund to balance the budget, but within a strictly- defined framework.

The government is only allowed to use the fund’s estimated returns, not the capital itself, to prevent the fund from being depleted.

The fund’s estimated return was originally set at four per cent (after inflation and management costs), but was slashed this year to three per cent by the outgoing right-wing government.

Norway’s political parties have generally supported this figure and consider it more realistic for future financial investments.

Last year, for the first time, the government began withdrawing more from the fund than it put in, as oil revenues slumped due to the tumbling price of crude.

Even though this means Oslo has de facto stopped saving, the fund has continued to grow thanks to the yield on investments and the sometimes favourable exchange rate. — AFP