It is believed that Russia's Alexei Kudrin will use his first meeting with his Norwegian counterpart since Oslo earlier this year changed the purpose of its Petroleum Fund to look into the possibility of adapting what is seen as Norway's new strategy to Russia, the source said.
Formally, Kudrin will discuss labor and climate change with Germany, Iceland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden - "largely the same issues that will be put on the G8 table" next month, the source said.
But the real reason why Russia sent the minister, rather than a deputy, to the annual meeting for the first time in 12 years appears to be the fact that Norway, which is widely believed to be the model for Russia's management of its oil windfalls, recently renamed its $300-billion Petroleum Fund, set up in 1990, to the Government Pensions Fund Global.
That raised speculations that the Norwegians would use part of the new fund to pay pensions because the country's pensioners would receive ever less support from the country's shrinking workforce.
Earlier Kudrin, who is known to have for years resisted calls to use the fund that has accumulated nearly $100 billion of Russia's oil money since 2004 for internal investment and social spending, had conceded that "the [Norwegian] strategy is a possibility."
