Norwegian pension fund looks towards Russia
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, Europes biggest fund of its kind, will step up investments in Russia, the Norwegian Finance Ministry confirms. The Russian oil and gas industry might be among the funds new investment priorities
Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen last week said that the fund, based on revenues from the oil industry, will step up investments in 18 new countries. The most important of the new countries are Russia, India and China.
The fund by the end of 2007 had a total value of 2019 billion NOK (253 billion EUR).
According to the ministry, 1.36 percent of the fund will from now on be invested in Russia. With today’s value of the fund, that totals about 13 billion NOK (1,63 billion EUR). According to newspaper E24.no, the fund has from before invested 2 billion NOK in Gazprom.
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, which is composed of the Pension Fund–Global (previously known as the Petroleum Fund) and the Pension Fund, invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector.
The fund is administered by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), a part of the Norwegian Central Bank. It is currently the largest pension fund in Europe and similar in size to the California public-employees pension fund (CalPERS), the largest public pension fund in the United States.
