How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'
Bergen is not a place to go looking for supercars racing around
Hugged
by mountains and perched on a stunning coastline of fjords, Bergen,
Norway's second-largest city, has picture-postcard views.
As one of the centres of Norway's booming oil and gas industries, it is also a very wealthy place.Yet there are few displays of ostentatious spending - there are no supercars with tinted windows, no designer handbag shops, and no queues of people outside exclusive nightclubs.
For while other countries have struck oil and then binged on the revenues, by contrast Norway is continuing to invest its oil and gas money in a giant sovereign wealth fund.
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“Start Quote
Prof Alexander Cappelen NHH Norwegian School of EconomicsWe trust the government, we believe our tax money will be spent wisely”
The fund, worth about $800bn
(£483bn), owns 1% of the entire world's stocks, and is big enough to
make every citizen a millionaire in the country's currency, the kroner.
In effect, it is a giant savings account.
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