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.
© anu for Royal Times of Nigeria Newspaper, 2014. |
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