The importance of the PNG Sovereign Wealth Fund cannot be understated as it aims to ensure PNG’s natural resource revenues are well managed and used.Deputy Secretary-Economic and Financial Policy from the Treasury Department, Mr Anthony Yauieb said this yesterday in Port Moresby at a national budget forum hosted by the National Research Institute.
He said nearly 40 nations around the world have Sovereign Wealth Funds and it was time for PNG to also benefit from this well established practise of managing resource wealth. Yauieb explained that the 2011 budget approved in November 2010 provided for the establishment of the SWF and its key design elements. “Since February last year, the Government has been developing the SWF framework and its legislation which the Government endorsed last October………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Triputra Agro Persada, the palm oil company owned by Indonesian billionaires Theodore Rachmat and Benny Subianto, will increase its planted area by two-thirds by 2015 as it prepares for an initial stock sale.
Triputra Agro Persada has been buying plantations since it was set up in 2005 and currently owns about 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres), Chief Executive Officer Arif Rachmat said in an interview in Jakarta Sept. 7. It plans to increase its planted areas to at least 200,000 hectares from more than 120,000 hectares with the help of funding from TPG Capital’s Indonesian partner, Northstar, and Government of Singapore Investment Corp………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The people of Alabama will vote Tuesday to borrow money from the Alabama Trust Fund in order to bolster our state budget for the short term. This is exactly why the trust fund exists, and this is exactly the type of crisis this fund was created to remedy.
I know this to be an absolute fact, because as a former member of the Alabama Legislature, I was the chief sponsor of the legislation that created the Alabama Trust Fund and campaigned vigorously for the passage of the legislation………………………………………..Full Article: Source

About 50 people gathered on the steps of the Alabama Capitol to urge residents to vote “no” Tuesday on a constitutional amendment to allow the transfer of $437.4 million from the Alabama Trust Fund to be used for Medicaid, prisons and other state services.
Holding signs urging voters to not “bust” the trust fund, the demonstrators Thursday listened to representatives of grassroots groups who said the principle from the fund, established by former Gov. Fob James, was never meant to be spent………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The protracted flirtation between mining giants Glencore and Xstrata appears to be nearing a conclusion. Glencore has made a final offer to Xstrata worth $36bn, or 3.05 shares for each Xstrata share, up from an initial offer of 2.8. In return for the higher price, Glencore’s chief executive Ivan Glasenberg will take over from Xstrata’s Mick Davis as head of the combined entity after six months, rather than Davis remaining in charge for longer, as originally envisaged.
Last week, just as the offer was about to expire, former prime minister Tony Blair helped broker an agreement between Glencore and the Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, the main holdout………………………………………..Full Article: Source