Norway plans to review the ethical guidelines of the world’s biggest sovereign-wealth fund in a bid to prevent too much political interference, a key lawmaker from the governing Conservative Party said.
The Oslo-based fund, which is built on Norway’s oil and gas wealth, crossed the $1 trillion threshold back in 2017. As it’s swelled, politicians have grown more interested in its investments.
ccording to Henrik Asheim, the Conservative lawmaker who heads Parliament’s Finance Committee, the list of suggestions on the fund’s ethical guidelines has become too onerous and the process too undisciplined. He says he worries that the fund will end up being used as a political tool.
Norway’s new majority government is setting up an expert commission to go through the guidelines in order to address those concerns, Asheim said in a phone interview on Friday.
“We are worried that you could get a situation — especially when the fund has gotten so big — where you get these types of incoherent changes, which might not be sufficiently thought through,” he said. “You can always come up with something new that the oil fund should get out of. But maybe we should start in the other end and decide on some principles instead of continuously making new decisions.”
