The sector composition of the three Scandinavian stock exchanges provides an illustration. The Oslo Stock Exchange is heavily dominated by the energy sector, which is practically absent in Stockholm, Copenhagen and the two other Nordic exchanges. Norway has small traditional industries, but the IT and telecom sector is comparable to the other countries’ in relative size. The different sector composition of the stock exchanges also illustrates the potential for diversification by investing across the Nordic countries. The differences in industrial structure imply that international economic developments will affect the Nordic countries differently. Most notably, an oil price shock will have the opposite effect in Norway than in the other Nordic economies. In 2001, the petroleum sector in Norway accounted for around 20 per cent of total investments, 45 per cent of exports, 24 per cent of GDP and 35 per cent of central government revenues. The government net cash flow from the petroleum sector has increased in recent years. Since 1995, the fiscal surplus has been invested in the Government Petroleum Fund. The size of the Fund has increased rapidly in the last few years, and will reach close to 100 per cent of GDP towards the end of this decade, according to estimates from the Ministry of Finance. By investing a substantial part of petroleum revenues abroad, the Government Petroleum Fund limits the effect of the current account surplus on the exchange rate. GDP growth in Norway has been relatively high since 1990, also when excluding the petroleum sector.

The implementation of quick and concrete measures, which guarantee the long-term stability of public debt, seems that shall condition considerably the future development. World financial markets have reacted tensely against these developments, being characterised by a high volatility and an increase of risk primes throughout the instruments variety, markets and financial agents. Turning to the domestic economy, the latest qualitative and quantitative indicators show a slow performance of economy in the early months of 2010. The deceleration of domestic demand is compensated by a positive and growing performance of the Albanian exports. The domestic inflationary pressures were low and the consumer price inflation declining. Monetary markets revealed more calm, characterised by a dropping trend of interest rates, liquidity situation improvement of the banking system and a more stable performance of the exchange rate. However, lending to economy continues to maintain low growth paces. Indirect and prior estimates suggest that the paces of private consumption have been controlled, conditioned by restricted sources of its financing and by the higher tendency of consumers regarding savings. The low level of capacities utilisation in economy, the low paces of loan for investments and the fall of capital and intermediate goods import, signal a contraction of private investments even during the first three months of this year. The demand for monetary assets of private sector continues to be low, thus reflecting a deceleration of the economic activity. The annual pace of lending growth, excluding the exchange rate effect, for this sector slowed down onwards, at 4.8 percent in March.