Norway spends on oil to avoid slump

Norway’s government has boosted the amount of oil money it will spend this year to a record level, dipping deeper into its sovereign wealth fund to ward off a recession.

The government will use 205.6 billion kroner (€22bn) of its oil wealth, up from the 195.2bn kroner it estimated in October, according to the budget released in Oslo yesterday.

The spending will have a stimulus effect of 1.1 percentage points, up from 0.7 percentage point in the initial budget.