Norway to help Indian stocks by pumping $2 million

Author: Anurag Bhullar

The land of mid-night Sun has brought a ray of hope for the Indian stocks. The relief came as plans of investment of up to $2 million from Norway’s sovereign wealth fund surfaced. The Norwegian Government announced that the Government Pension Fund investments will be done in the period starting from the present month to 2009 January.

The Pension Fund boasts of assets worth $350 billion, being the world’s second largest sovereign wealth fund after the Abu Dhabi investment Authority; the latter has assets of $875 billion. Taking the process further, officials of the Indian Ministry of Finance met with the Norway’s deputy secretary general of the Finance Ministry, Thorvald Moe.

Moe informed that an up-dated version of the double taxation avoidance treaty, that was signed between India and Norway long back in 1986 would be ready by the coming January. He also said that the managers of Pension fund view India in a better position now, the change being reflected by an increase in India’s weight from 0.2 per cent to 0.94 percent. The reason is the potential they see in the country. He further said that investment would be done only in those Indian companies which fulfil the Norwegian Government guidelines. The ones that use child labour or somehow cause degradation of environment will be kept out of this bracket.