Norway’s government proposed on Sunday nearly doubling the country’s credit guarantee package for export companies and boosting aid to other industries hard-hit by the global financial crisis.
The government aims to increase guarantees available through the Norwegian Guarantee Institute for Export Credits (GIEK) from 60 billion kroner (US$8.4 billion) to 110 billion kroner, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Trade and Industry Minister Sylvia Brustad told reporters.
“By significantly expanding the GIEK framework we will secure Norwegian companies contracts abroad and investments at home,” Stoltenberg said.
“We’ve seen a huge need for better loan financing and better guarantee arrangements at a time when the private bank market is not working the way it should because of the global financial crisis,” he said.
Norway, Brustad said, was especially vulnerable to the ongoing financial turmoil because it “has a small and open economy, and half of everything we produce here is sold abroad.”
Oslo also plans to hike loan guarantees for ship builders by 3 billion kroner to a total of 8 billion and to increase the loans available from Innovation Norway, a state-held company that provides financing to small and medium-sized businesses, by 1 billion kroner to a total of 2.5 billion kroner, Brustad said.
“We are facing the most serious blow to the world economy seen since the 1930s [and] Norway will also be affected,” Stoltenberg said, adding that the crisis “will affect many parts of the Norwegian economy and many areas of Norwegian society.”
“It is the government’s role to do all that is possible to secure jobs and create new jobs for those who will lose their jobs in areas hit by the financial crisis,” he said.
The government plans to present its proposal to parliament on Friday and the house is expected to vote it through before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Swiss authorities said they may inject more money into UBS a month after offering the country’s largest bank tens of billions of dollars in aid, remarks published on Sunday said.
“We must ask the question if whether our measures were sufficient,” Swiss Federal Banking Commission head Daniel Zuberbuehler told the weekly Sonntagszeitung.
“If the situation gets worse, we must ... proceed with a new capital increase,” Zuberbuehler said, adding that another state intervention “was not excluded.”
But he dismissed speculation about a merger between UBS and the country’s second largest bank Credit Suisse, saying such a deal was likely to create more problems than it would solve.
On Oct. 16, Switzerland unveiled a rescue package worth almost US$60 billion for UBS — one of the biggest losers in the US subprime crisis.
The bank’s problems have been compounded by a UBS executive being charged with conspiracy to defraud the US of tax revenues, and of concealing around US$20 billion of assets from the Internal Revenue Service.
UBS clients have withdrawn more than 83.6 billion Swiss francs (US$70.1 billion) between July and September.
A finance ministry spokesman said he “there was no need to take new measures” to help UBS for the moment, but did not rule out another capital injection if the global situation worsened.
Swiss authorities already have 9 percent of UBS’ capital and any new rescue package would only increase their stake in the bank.
But their efforts have failed to boost investors’ confidence, with UBS shares in freefall. They closed on Friday at SF11.35, sharply down from SF80 in June last year.
“It’s hard to say just how far the shares will fall,” one analyst said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS