Norway makes first withdrawal from sovereign wealth fund: report

Norway's government made a withdrawal from the country's huge sovereign wealth fund for the first time in January as low oil prices resulted in reduced state revenues, local media reported on Friday.

Figures from the national accounts show the government extracted 6.7 billion Norwegian kroner (790 million U.S. dollars) in January to pay for public expenditure, business newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported.

"As stated in the national budget for 2016, the government's net cash flow from petroleum activities is likely to be lower than the non-oil budget deficit in 2016," state secretary of the finance ministry Paal Bjornestad was quoted as saying.

"Although the decline in oil prices has accelerated the process, it should come as no great surprise that oil revenues would gradually decrease and would be lower than the fund's performance and the use of funds of the budget," he said.

It was the first time Norway made a withdrawal from the fund, formally known as the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) and ranked as the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund, since it transferred the first deposit of oil revenues into the account in 1996.

The GPFG, commonly referred to as the oil fund, is a fund into which the surplus wealth produced by Norway's petroleum income is deposited. As of Friday afternoon, its value was about 7.1 trillion kroner (831 billion U.S. dollars). Endit