Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has ballooned so much due to high oil and gas prices that every person in the country became a theoretical millionaire this week.
The Nordic nation is proving to be an exception as others struggle under a mountain of debts.
Set up in 1990, the fund owns around 1 percent of the world's stocks, as well as bonds and real estate from London to Boston.
The surplus revenue is collected in the Government Pension Fund Global.
A preliminary counter on the website of the central bank, which manages the fund, rose to 5.11 trillion kroner (£503.46 billion/$828.66 billion).
This equates to fractionally more than a million times Norway's most recent official population estimate of 5,096,300.
It was the first time it reached the equivalent of a million kroner each, central bank spokesman Thomas Sevang said.
Not that Norwegians will be able to access or spend the money - it is squirreled away for a rainy day for them and future generations.
Norway has resisted the temptation to splurge all the windfall since striking oil in the North Sea in 1969.
Finance Minister Siv Jensen told Reuters the fund, called the Government Pension Fund Global, had helped iron out big, unpredictable swings in oil and gas prices.
Norway is the world's number seven oil exporter.
'Many countries have found that temporary large revenues from natural resource exploitation produce relatively short-lived booms that are followed by difficult adjustments,' she said in an email.
The fund, equivalent to 183 percent of 2013 gross domestic product, is expected to peak at 220 percent around 2030.
'The fund is a success in the sense that parliament has managed to put aside money for the future. There are many examples of countries that have mot managed that,' said Oeystein Doerum, chief economist at DNB Markets.
Norway has sought to avoid the boom and bust cycle by investing the cash abroad, rather than at home.
Governments can spend 4 percent of the fund in Norway each year, slightly more than the annual return on investment.
Still, in Norway, oil wealth may have made the state reluctant to make reforms or cut subsidies unthinkable elsewhere.
Farm subsidies allow farmers, for instance, to keep dairy cows in heated barns in the Arctic.
It may also have made some Norwegians reluctant to work.
'One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working,' Doerum said, despite an official unemployment rate of 3.3 percent.
據英國《每日郵報》1月9日報道，在石油與天然氣價格走高的拉動下，挪威的主權財富基金不斷膨脹，以至于挪威所有國民本周在理論上都成為了百萬富翁。
作為全球最大的主權財富基金，挪威的主權基金成立于1990年，不僅擁有1%的全球股票，還擁有英美等國的債券、房地產等。在許多國家債臺高筑之際，挪威成為了一個耀眼的特例。
根據管理這筆資金的挪威央行初步統計，基金總額達到了5.11萬億克朗（約合8286.6億美元）。而根據最新統計，挪威人口只有509.6萬人，理論上來計算，每個國民可以分到100萬克朗。挪威央行發言人托馬斯·塞萬（Thomas Sevang）表示，這是首次達到人均100萬克朗。
但是，挪威人并不能夠將這筆錢一份了之，而是用于不時之需和留給后世子孫。挪威財政大臣西夫·延森表示，挪威政府全球養老基金幫助該國從容應對石油、天然氣價格的大幅波動。她表示：“許多國家發現，開采天然資源之后的短時巨額收入往往只能帶來相對短暫的繁榮，之后便是艱難的調整期。”挪威是世界第七大石油出口國。
DNB市場公司首席經濟學家德拉姆表示：“該基金大獲成功，議會得以為未來儲備了一筆資金，許多國家并未能做到這樣。”
為了避免出現繁榮與蕭條的周期性波動，挪威將資金投向國外而非國內。每年，挪威政府可以動用基金中4%的款項，略高于基金投資年收益。
然而，石油財富還是讓挪威不愿意進行改革或者削減在其他國家難以企及的補貼，也讓一些挪威人不愿意去工作。德拉姆說，目前挪威五分之一的適齡勞動人口在領取社保，而不去工作。 |
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