imminent listing on the stock exchange. successful private equity firms can provide an excess return, but i doubt that the fund will become a big investor in private equity firms in the near future. selecting good companies is demanding and management fees are high. many are highly leveraged and the sector ’ s behaviour is procyclical. the second class is nominal fixed income securities. over time these securities are expected to provide a lower return than equities. they are also less exposed to risk and are often easier to sell at short notice. the third – and new – class is real assets excluding equities. real assets will provide a cash flow that is assumed to track inflation. such investments thus deliver a long - term and fairly secure return in line with the fund ’ s objective. real estate purchases, an example of assets in this class, will commence in the near future. the dividing line between real estate and infrastructure is not very clear, and looking further ahead, it may be natural to invest in assets that can be classified as infrastructure. in addition, the fund ’ s investments in inflation - linked bonds could be included in this class. the two latter classes combined will make up 40 per cent of the fund. many real assets are fairly illiquid. a rapid build - up or sell - down of positions is therefore not profitable even if prices change. over many years ahead, the amount of nominal fixed income investments will exceed the amount of real assets. in the long run, it is conceivable that investments in the two classes may be more equally distributed. in the development of the investment strategy that i have presented, weight has been given to exploiting the fund ’ s long - term investment horizon and size. the strategy is based on objectives and expectations regarding the fund ’ s overall real return over time. moving forward, norges bank ’ s operational management of the fund should probably shift towards absolute return and absolute risk. transparency and accountability a clear division of responsibility between the ministry of finance as owner and norges bank as manager is an important component of the norwegian model. moreover, it is important that transparency and accountability are prominent features of the model. management objectives have been clearly defined. norges bank and the fund ’ s owner have always given weight to transparency with regard to the management of the fund. the standard was set at an early stage when the executive board decided that an exhaustive list of the fund ’ s investments should be published at the turn of each year and

normal again, and freight rates, energy prices and prices for many other commodities have fallen. but a tighter monetary policy has also contributed. if we had not raised the policy rate, inflation would have been higher, among other things, because the krone would have been weaker. and, we have not yet reached the target. we still have a way to go before inflation is back to 2 percent. high wage growth and the krone depreciation are contributing to keeping inflation elevated. we must be prepared for the possibility that the last mile of disinflation may take time and that headwinds may arise. chart : global disinflation has slowed global disinflation has slowed. this has led to a change in financial markets'assessment of interest rate prospects. while a few months ago there were expectations of early and rapid rate cuts, the market now expects major central banks to leave policy rates unchanged for longer in order to bring inflation down to their targets. in december, we raised the policy rate to 4. 5 percent, where it has since remained. when we set the policy rate, we seek to strike a balance between different considerations. an overly tight monetary policy will contract the economy more than necessary. that is something we want to avoid. but if the policy rate is lowered prematurely, prices may continue to rise rapidly, among other reasons, because the krone could depreciate. in our assessment, the policy rate is sufficiently high to tackle inflation. at the same time, there will likely be a need to maintain the policy rate at today's level for some time 3 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches ahead. if a further rate increase is judged necessary to bring inflation down to target within a reasonable time horizon, the committee is prepared to raise the policy rate again. as inflation recedes further and economic conditions so warrant, we can gradually lower the policy rate. our latest forecast implied a policy rate of just below 3 percent at the end of 2027, which is a good deal higher than it was before the onset of the pandemic. developments in recent years have reminded us that the outlook can change abruptly. the future will also see unexpected events. moreover, we must be prepared for the eventuality of larger and more frequent shocks than we experienced in the decades prior to the pandemic. the security policy backdrop is serious. russia's war against ukraine is a threat to peace and stability in europe. a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding