The Government Pension Fund of Norway () is the sovereign wealth fund collectively owned by the Government of Norway. It consists of two entirely separate sovereign wealth funds: the Government Pension Fund Global (Norges Bank Investment Management) About the fund: The aim of the fund is to ensure a long-term management of revenue from Norway’s oil and gas resources, so that this wealth benefits both current and future generations. The fund’s formal name is the Government Pension Fund Global. Norges Bank Investment Management. Retrieved 24 April 2025. and the Government Pension Fund Norway.
The Government Pension Fund Global (), also known as the Oil Fund (), was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. it had over US$2.2 trillion in assets, equal to 1.5% of the value of the world's listed companies, making it the world's largest sovereign wealth fund in terms of total assets under management. This translates to over US$390,000 per Norwegian citizen. It also holds portfolios of real estate and fixed-income investments. Many companies are excluded by the fund on ethical grounds.
The Government Pension Fund Norway () is smaller and was established in 1967 as a type of national insurance fund. It is managed separately from the Oil Fund and is limited to domestic and Nordic investments and is therefore a key stock holder in many large Norwegian companies, predominantly via the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Government Pension Fund Global The Government Pension Fund Global (, SPU) is a fund into which the surplus wealth produced by Norwegian petroleum income is deposited. Its name changed in January 2006 from the Petroleum Fund of Norway. The fund is commonly referred to as the Oil Fund ().
The purpose of the fund is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector, mainly from taxes of companies but also payment for licenses to explore for oil as well as the State's Direct Financial Interest and dividends from the partly state-owned Equinor. Current revenue from the petroleum sector is estimated to be at its peak period and to decline in the future decades. The Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 after a decision by the country's legislature to counter the effects of the forthcoming decline in income and to smooth out the disruptive effects of highly fluctuating oil prices.
As its name suggests, the Government Pension Fund Global is invested in international financial markets, so the risk is independent from the Norwegian economy. The fund was valued at NOK 22.683 trillion at the end of June 2026. At year-end 2025, the overall fund value was NOK 21.268 trillion, while the investment portfolio's market value before deferred tax and accrued management fees was NOK 21.286 trillion. At that year-end, the fund was invested in 7,201 listed companies, and its investments spanned 68 countries and 41 currencies. Its 2025 return was 15.1 percent before management costs, measured in its currency basket; in accounting terms, the return was NOK 2.362 trillion.
Background Norway has experienced economic surpluses since the development of its hydrocarbon resources in the 1970s. This reality, coupled with the desire to mitigate volatility stemming from fluctuating oil prices, motivated the creation of Norway's Oil Fund, now the Government Pension Fund-Global (GPF-G). The instability of oil prices has been of constant concern for oil-dependent countries since the start of the oil boom, but especially so in the decades following the first oil shocks in the 1970s. As the real GDP of oil-exporting states is linked with the price of oil, it has been a goal of these exporters to stabilize oil consumption patterns, and a host of these exporting states singled out sovereign wealth funds as an effective policy tool for achieving this outcome. The adoption of the GPF-G has been in line with the global economic trends, especially investment patterns. International investment has increased at a significantly higher pace than either global GDP or global trade of goods and services, increasing by 175% over a period at which the former two metrics increased by 53% and 93% respectively.
Management and size
The domestic fund, the Government Pension Fund Norway, is managed by Folketrygdfondet. The global investment fund is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), part of the Norwegian Central Bank on the behalf of the Ministry of Finance.theglobeandmail.com: "Alberta and Norway: Two oil powers, worlds apart", 15 August 2015
it was the largest pension fund in the world, but it is not a pension fund in the conventional sense, as it derives its financial backing from oil profits, not pension contributions. In September 2017, the fund exceeded US$1 trillion in value for the first time, a thirteen-fold increase since 2002. With a population of 5.2 million people, the fund was worth $192,307 per Norwegian citizen. Of the assets, 65% were equities (accounting for 1.3% of global equity markets), and the rest were property and fixed-income investments. Norway can withdraw up to 3% of the fund's value each year. The first withdrawal in its history was made in 2016. In a parliamentary white paper in April 2011, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance forecast that the fund would reach $1 trillion by the end of 2019. According to the forecast, a worst-case scenario for the fund value in 2030 was forecast at $455 billion, and a best case scenario at $3.3 trillion. With 2.33 percent of European stocks, it is the largest stock owner in Europe.
In 1998, the fund was allowed to invest up to 40 percent of its portfolio in the international stock market. In June 2009, the ministry decided to raise the stock portion to 60 percent. In May 2014, the Central Bank governor proposed raising the rate to 70 percent. The Norwegian government planned that up to 5 percent of the fund should be invested in real estate, beginning in 2010. A specific policy for the real estate investments was suggested in a report the Swiss Partners Group wrote for the Norwegian Ministry of Finance.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund is taking steps to become more active in company governance. In the second quarter of 2013, the sovereign fund voted in 6,078 general meetings as well as 239 shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues. Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) has the potential to influence the corporate governance market in Europe, and possibly China as well, greatly."Could Norway's Sovereign Fund be a Vanguard for Corporate Governance ." Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. 13 August 2013. Retrieved 21 August 2013. It has also started to become active in pushing for lower executive pay."" BBC. 2 May 2016. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
In 2019, the Government Pension Fund received a perfect score of 100 in the Sovereign Wealth Fund Transparency and Accountability Scoreboard published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, ranking it first among 64 sovereign wealth funds worldwide.
Largest investments The fund's largest holdings in the global stock and bond markets in the second quarter of 2026 were: Company/BondsCountryMarket value in US$ mn.Stake US Treasury bonds209,985...Nvidia61,8471.28%Apple52,7191.24%Alphabet Inc.50,4661.17%Microsoft35,1131.27%TSMC33,5251.70%Amazon.com31,8671.24%Japanese government bonds25,499...Broadcom23,4031.30%Samsung Electronics22,5121.88%British government bonds19,677...ASML17,6862.32%SK Hynix17,5931.44%Meta Platforms17,0481.19%German government bonds16,427...Micron Technology16,2411.25%Tesla, Inc.15,7201.00%Eli Lilly13,1191.16%Monetary Authority of Singapore bonds12,888...Canadian government bonds12,344...AMD12,3571.30%Berkshire Hathaway11,7580.59%JPMorgan Chase11,6601.34%
Relationship to sovereignty The rise of globalization as the predominant political-economic system has had several key effects on states, especially in regard to interdependence and sovereignty. The erosion of fully independent socioeconomic structures has provoked new questions regarding the role of the state and its ability to project its sovereignty on a set of global economic systems that seem largely out of reach both legally and pragmatically for most states. Sovereign wealth funds are an inherently nationalist type of investment vehicle, and there exists potential for their use as a mitigating force to the supranational forces of globalization. The issue with this is that such practices may lead to a general increase in protectionism as nations attempt to wrestle back control of their economies from external forces, an outcome that most economic intergovernmental organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund, would like to see avoided. Some commentators, like Professor Gordon L. Clark of the University of Oxford, express concerns regarding non-profit considerations motivating the practices of the GPF-G, especially in regards to its ethical concerns and how these considerations may be used as a means of exerting Norwegian standards on foreign firms. On the other hand, the OECD has stated that sovereign wealth funds have had a stabilizing influence on international markets due to their ability to provide capital during times of domestic investor pessimism. The OECD has taken steps to minimize the possibilities of economic protectionism by instituting the Freedom of Investment project, where participating states agree upon guiding sets of principles that seek to boost transparency and transnational investment, while also advising states on how to best handle issues of foreign investment in the sphere of national security.
Debate As a result of the large size of the fund relative to the low number of people living in Norway (5.6million ), the Oil Fund has become a hot political issue, dominated by three main issues: Whether the country should use more of the petroleum revenues for the state budget instead of saving the funds for the future. The main matter of debate is to what degree increased government spending would increase inflation. Whether the high level of exposure (around 72 percent ) to the volatile stock market is financially safe. Others claim that the high diversification and extreme long-term nature of the investments will dilute the risk and that the state is losing considerable amounts of money because of the low investment percentage in the stock market. Whether the Petroleum Fund is practicing socially responsible investing.
Concerns and potential outcomes