To generate greater goodwill, he has already had the Norwegian cabinet endorse unambiguous support for India's candidature as a permanent member of the Security Council. He is about the only person with sufficient charisma to be able to tell the Norwegian people that they will be given no access to the 400 billion kroner petroleum fund. We do not intend to make that mistake. His argument is that the economy is already doing well enough.
Unemployment is down to one per cent.
Any further injection of money into this economy will overheat it and inflation will be the obvious consequence. So the petroleum fund wealth is being invested in thousands of extremely low risk ventures. Stoltenberg's evaluation of India as a superpower in the current millennium is shared by other countries in the region. Just imagine sub-zero arctic temperatures in the Finnish Lapland. The main highway from the Lapp town of Rovaniemi swerves right onto the narrow path lined with snow-clad ferns and pines, and leads inevitably to a sauna hut on the edge of a frozen lake.