By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO (Reuters) – Some 40,000 Norwegian citizens picked at random will next month receive an invitation to help shape the future of their country’s wealth, including what to do with its $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest.
They will be whittled down to 66 to take part in the Future Panel, described as a “citizens’ assembly for Norway’s future” by its organisers, a group of seven non-governmental organisations.
The aim is to discuss the future of the country’s Government Pension Fund Global, the piggy bank nicknamed the oil fund. Its current value is equivalent to each man, woman and child owning $316,000.
Started as a sovereign fund in 1998, the oil fund pools the state’s revenues from oil and gas production into investments abroad, both to avoid overheating the domestic economy and for the benefit of future generations.
For Kristin Halvorsen, a former finance minister who will be an advisor to the initiative, the citizens’ assembly will be a way to hear voices from society about the fund that are not usually widely heard.
“Public debate … in every country is dominated by people that are eager to discuss and to share their opinions and to have political impact,” she told reporters.
“The citizens’ assembly gives us an opportunity to hear voices that don’t seek that kind of attention. That is important for democracy.”
The 66 panelists will be selected based on age, gender, place of residence, education and attitude towards climate change, to have a representative sample of the population.
They will meet six times digitally and twice in person between now and April 2025, when they will deliver their recommendations.
A parliamentary election will take place in September and their recommendations could help shape the political debate on the fund.
For another co-adviser, Knut Kjaer, the fund’s first CEO from 1997 to 2008, the citizens’ assembly is a chance to think about the interests of citizens not yet born.
“My personal interest … from this work is: ‘how do we find mechanisms to get in the voice of the future generations’,” he told reporters.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo; Editing by David Holmes)
