Sovereign Wealth

I do hold a more than passing fascination with the idea of Sovereign Wealth Funds – I find the idea of a nation being a custodian of the wealth of the nation to be intriguing. I am also interested ( read fucken appalled) in how badly managed our resources are. For example in 2021 it is estimated that Australia and Qatar will ship roughly the same quantity of liquefied natural gas (about 100 billion cubic metres) For which Qatar will receive $26.6B in royalties whilst we will collect $800M. A staggering disparity – you could say that our incompetence has cost us $25.8B. Alternatively you could say our government has given away this amount of money to someone else for whatever reason. The rationale for governments doing this is up to others to decide.

When thinking about such funds I wanted to see what the latest league table looked like and Google was very helpful and I assembled the following table. I extend it to the 15 largest funds to include our domestic fund.

As you would expect the rising might of China sees it in first place whilst we sit at 13. I decided to re rank this table according to population to get a measure of efficiency and to actually see how much benefit per citizen the funds generate.

China slips from number one to number 13 – so much money but also so many people. Adjusting for population size only moves us up three places. The absolute superstar of such funds is Norway who have an enviable record of managing their North Sea oil and gas revenues. We can only dream of what the size of our fund would have been if the countries resources has been properly managed