Numbers of and amounts in Sovereign Wealth Funds

Apr 01, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
All the talk about Sovereign Wealth Fund has caused me to question who will benefit from the investment returns and principal. If you are a politician or money manager you will be salivating. According to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, it took Trinidad 17 years to a mass $5.5 billion compared to Mexico’s $6.6 billion for the same period. The number one and two rank funds belong to Norway and China, respectively. Norway took 27 years to reach $870.8 billion while it took China only 10 years to achieve $813.8 billion. It should be noted China has several other like sovereign funds totaling approximately $900 billion.
Then there is the Sovereign Wealth Fund established by Venezuela in 1998 under the advice of the IMF. By December 2001, the fund had $7.1 billion in assets. In 2003, the government tapped the fund to cover fiscal budget, withdrawing more than $6 billion. In 2016, the fund balance is $800 million. Separately, China is ranked number 20 for quality of life compared to Norway’s ranking of 5. Canada is ranked number one; no sovereign fund, only some provinces have their individual wealth funds.
In 2016, Trinidad drew from its sovereign fund to plug budget shortfalls; the finance minister was quoted in Bloomberg as saying “The purpose of this fund is to offset serious shortfalls in revenue in periods of depressed petroleum prices,” He said during a session of Parliament in Port of Spain. “It is not, as some believe, a trophy to be kept on a shelf and never to be touched.”Conclusion, how much power will the people give their finance minister. For this reason, Mr. Trotman is the wrong minister to speak about the fund.
Keith Bernard

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