Legislature(2015 - 2016)HOUSE FINANCE 519
01/28/2016 09:00 AM House FINANCE
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| Audio | Topic |
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| Start | |
| Presentation: Sovereign Wealth Funds & Rule-based Resource Revenue Management: Global Trends, Challenges and Best Practices by Malan Rietveld, Managing Director, Rietveld Consultancy, Inc. | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
HOUSE FINANCE COMMITTEE
January 28, 2016
9:03 a.m.
9:03:26 AM
CALL TO ORDER
Co-Chair Thompson called the House Finance Committee
meeting to order at 9:03 a.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Mark Neuman, Co-Chair
Representative Steve Thompson, Co-Chair
Representative Dan Saddler, Vice-Chair
Representative Bryce Edgmon
Representative Les Gara
Representative Lynn Gattis
Representative David Guttenberg
Representative Scott Kawasaki
Representative Cathy Munoz
Representative Lance Pruitt
Representative Tammie Wilson
MEMBERS ABSENT
None
ALSO PRESENT
Jerry Burnett, Deputy Commissioner, Treasury Division,
Department of Revenue; Malan Rietveld, Managing Director,
Rietveld Consultancy Inc.; Representative Cathy Tilton;
Representative Jim Colver.
SUMMARY
PRESENTATION: SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS & RULE-BASED RESOURCE
REVENUE MANAGEMENT: GLOBAL TRENDS, CHALLENGES AND BEST
PRACTICES BY MALAN RIETVELD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, RIETVELD
CONSULTANCY, INC.
Co-Chair Thompson reviewed the agenda for the day. The
committee would be hearing a presentation on sovereign
wealth funds by Malan Rietveld. Mr. Rietveld was a fellow
of the Center for International Development within the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was
also the director of Kalytix Partners. Mr. Rietveld has
worked around the world assisting countries in creating
sovereign funds that help create a permanent source of
income. The presentation would not address any bills but
would provide the committee with information regarding
sovereign wealth funds and the pros and cons of
establishing these endowment funds. He asked committee
members to hold their questions until Mr. Rietveld has
completed his presentation unless the question directly
related to understanding the material being presented.
^PRESENTATION: SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS & RULE-BASED RESOURCE
REVENUE MANAGEMENT: GLOBAL TRENDS, CHALLENGES AND BEST
PRACTICES BY MALAN RIETVELD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, RIETVELD
CONSULTANCY, INC.
9:05:15 AM
JERRY BURNETT, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, TREASURY DIVISION,
DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE, introduced Malan Rietveld. He
reported that Mr. Rietveld came to Alaska, gave a
presentation to the administration on sovereign wealth
funds and rule-based management. The administration invited
him back to speak to the legislature. He thanked Mr.
Rietveld for being present and turned to him to begin his
presentation.
Representative Thompson indicated that Representative
Pruitt had joined the meeting.
MALAN RIETVELD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, RIETVELD CONSULTANCY
INC., provided his history working on sovereign wealth
funds (SWFs). He was a trained economist and worked for 10
years on issues concerning sovereign wealth fund
management. The term "Sovereign Wealth Fund" was coined
about 10 years ago. He noted the funds had been in
existence for much longer than the name. He had worked on
issues related to SWFs and resource-rich jurisdictions,
countries, states, and provinces around the world from the
Middle East to Norway to a number of US state funds. He was
also doing his PhD on the subject, which was nearly
complete.
9:07:13 AM
Mr. Rietveld introduced the PowerPoint presentation:
"Managing natural resource funds: global trends and
practices" (copy on file). He began with providing a
context of the growth of SWFs in recent decades. He pointed
to slide 1: "The growth of new SWFs" which contained a map
of the world and the areas in which SWFs were operating. He
noted that the red highlighted areas were the locations of
the largest SWFs. There was a number of large funds in the
Middle East in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar.
He thought the great amount of economic and political
diversity in the funds was striking. He would address the
significant differences shortly in terms of the size of the
funds relative to the domestic economy and relative to the
size of the budget and the government spending needs.
Mr. Rietveld believed it was useful to consider that within
the world of SWFs there were a few different kinds of
funds. He would emphasize three types of funds. The first
instance was stabilization funds, which was particularly
relevant to countries that funded themselves mainly through
natural resources subject to tremendous volatility. The
function of a stabilization fund was to provide support in
stabilizing government spending. Consequently, the funds
typically held liquid assets that were available on short
notice for stabilization purposes. The second group were
outright savings funds. The point of the funds was to
accumulate savings. They typically invested in more
diversified portfolios with greater risk orientation in
exchange for higher expected returns. The defining
characteristic was that they did not typically have
drawdowns. The idea was to accumulate assets for the future
either for a specific earmarked purpose. For example, the
SWFs in Australia and New Zealand were required to meet a
pension liability by 2030 and 2035 respectively. Again, the
SWFs defining characteristics included the accumulation of
funds and the compounding of earnings without sustainable
draws or the provision of annual income.
Mr. Rietveld stated the third and largest most interesting
group was investment income funds. The funds invest
similarly to savings funds but they provided an annual flow
based on a variety of different mechanisms unlike savings
funds. They were important in the context of resource-rich
countries and jurisdictions because they provided an
alternative source of revenue to government in addition to
revenues funded by natural resources. Essentially all North
American permanent funds operated as investment income
funds. The only exception was the recently established
North Dakota fund, which was acting as savings fund.
However, the intention was to transform it into an income
fund within the next 5 to 10 years. Simply put, North
Dakota was still accumulating assets with the intention to
draw on the assets in a sustainable manner down the road.
He mentioned that it was interesting that all of the SWFs
in the world really were the Texas funds. Texas had the
Texas Permanent Schools Fund, the oldest, and the Texas
Permanent University Fund, which managed assets earned on
state land that belonged to the two respective systems.
Their investment incomes were used to fund the school and
university systems, which had been founded in the 1850s.
Mr. Rietveld did not want any confusion around why sub-
national jurisdictions used the word sovereign. All working
definitions of SWFs would include funds like the Alaska
Permanent Fund, the Wyoming Permanent Fund, and others. The
idea of sovereign meant that ultimately the funds were
managed by a government in trust by the citizens and for
the benefit of the citizens. He felt very comfortable
thinking of the Alaska Permanent Fund as a sovereign wealth
fund.
9:12:08 AM
Mr. Rietveld discussed the chart on slide 2: "The growth of
new SWFs." He relayed that the chart showed the growth of
SWFs by periods. There were three interesting periods in
Texas and New Mexico in the 19th century. At the inception
of statehood, they created funds to help fund government
priorities. Funds were established in the 70s and 80s, in
response to the commodity price boom of the 70s and
production increases. The Middle Eastern funds had
typically been established in the oil shocks period of the
70s. The Alaska Permanent Fund was created in 1976 as was
the Alberta Heritage [Savings Trust] Fund and a number of
North American state permanent funds. More recently since
2000, there had been a real proliferation of funds. The
concept was essentially catching on and had been tried and
tested as a sensible and prudent way to manage volatile and
depleting (in most instances) natural resource assets and
income. The added that the overwhelming majority of SWFs
were created by the proceeds from natural resources. There
were also funds, particularly in Asia, that were funded by
other forms of government surpluses and government revenue
such as privatization proceeds, foreign exchange reserve
accumulation related to exchange rate policies, and other
surpluses. He noted that the majority of funds (75 percent
to 80 percent of assets) were held by countries that funded
them through natural resource revenues.
Mr. Rietveld advanced to slide 3: "Major global trends: the
context." He framed three distinct eras that he saw in how
SWFs had historically evolved. The first group was what he
called SWFs 1.0. In the case of the first permanent funds
and what happened in the 70s in the Middle East and the
North American permanent funds the emphasis was on the
simple process of creating a fund, a major step. It
required getting the legal foundations established and
installing a discipline where the state or government would
not spend all revenues but was going to put it aside in a
structure with its own legal identity. Consequently, the
investment model for these kind of funds was very simple:
Cash balances were maintained without a significant amount
of attention paid to the fund's investment styles and the
use of the funds. The idea behind a fund was to try to
insulate a share of revenues from the budget process. Often
they came because of a political compromise. One of the
more interesting examples was the State of Wyoming. In
1976, there were proponents of a higher severance tax on
production. Members of the legislature and the governor
were concerned that if the increase in severance taxes came
to pass all of the additional revenue would be spent. As a
compromise, the Wyoming Permanent Fund was created so that
the excess revenues would flow to the permanent fund to be
spent over successive generations rather than immediately.
If the money had been spent immediately, it would have
likely been destabilizing to the state.
9:16:25 AM
Mr. Rietveld scrolled to slide 4: "Major global trends: the
context." He reported that around the turn of the century
there was a shift to what he referred to as SWFs 2.0 when a
number of things happened. There was a significant increase
in the number of funds and a significant growth in the size
of the assets managed by the funds because of increasing
revenues to fund them and healthy financial returns. There
was also an emergence of non-resource based SWFs
particularly in Asia, China, and Korea. Singapore had funds
earlier but theirs had increased significantly during this
period. The Sovereign Wealth Fund model became mainstream
around the Asian financial crisis in 1998 until 2014. It
became standard advice for the international monetary fund,
for example, in advising countries that were resource
dependent and resource rich as a way to manage fiscal
affairs. It lead to the creation of the International Forum
of Sovereign Wealth Funds eight years previously. The group
was a convening body for all the international funds. The
Alaska Permanent Fund was an active member of the forum and
met at least once annually. It was a place to discuss ideas
and share best practices. The group had come up with a list
of 24 general governance principles and practices of which
the Alaska Permanent Fund was in full compliance as a
global leader of good SWF practices. He added that around
the same period there was greater political consensus
concerning the purpose of the funds. Countries that had the
funds imbedded in their constitution had less of an issue.
In the Middle East, there was a break from the historical
tendency to dip into the funds without any principle and
rule behind it. Countries gradually began to understand
that the funds were there for a particular purpose and for
the long-term. Finally, there was significant growth in
media attention, policy analysis, and academic research
devoted to SWFs.
9:18:37 AM
Mr. Rietveld skipped to slide 6: "SWFs 3.0: Adjusting to
new fiscal realities." He contended that the collapsing oil
prices especially since late 2014 was heralding in the new
era of SWFs 3.0. He would briefly run through what the key
issues were presently. He thought it would frame the
discussion in House Finance. It would give members the
sense that Alaska was by no means alone in confronting the
issues. He believed the most important issue presently for
resource-based countries given the most recent drop in oil
prices was to consider the savings mechanism as well as
paying greater attention to thinking about the sustainable
and sensible approach to using investment income, to using
earmarked pools of assets. Accumulated in good times to
help support spending and economic stability in tough
times. He was seeing the replacement of what he called old
rules of thumb that worked quite well in a rising tide. The
simple process for saving assets was shifting to a more
sophisticated set of policies combining a savings rule with
a sensible spending rule. He thought Norway, Abu Dhabi, and
Chile were three examples of countries that were already
there. The majority of resourced-based SWFs were getting
there. All three of the countries operated in different
contexts and different degrees of resource dependence. In
broad strokes, they were at the vanguard of countries and
governments that had already moved in the same direction.
As people thought through appropriate combinations of
savings and spending rules, the focus in the first instance
was to avoid a depletion of funds in tough times for
commodity producers. He suggested it would be less of an
issue if an entity's principle was constitutionally
protected. For many countries, it was not the case. They
had to take action to ensure that the fund's capital and
assets were protected. Once that was achieved, the real
objective for commodity dependent countries was to decouple
spending from the underlying commodity cycle. The real
question was what role could SWFs and the spending rules
around SWFs play in breaking the historical cycle that many
countries and jurisdictions suffer from where spending
tended to track oil prices and oil revenue. He stated that
an ebbing tide had revealed that some people had been
swimming naked. He elaborated that essentially, as
commodity prices were rising there was a significant
interest in the SWF model because it was working well. As
the tide ebbed, there were some elements, particularly on
the spending side, that needed further work to improve
spending and savings policies making them more robust
through the commodity cycle.
9:21:50 AM
Mr. Rietveld advanced to slide 7: "SWFs 3.0: Adjusting to
new fiscal realities." He continued that in going into the
SWF era of adjusting to new fiscal realities for commodity
producers there were three groups of countries. Group A
were countries that never saved enough initially. Despite
the uninterrupted rise in commodity prices between 2004 and
2014, (2009 was an exception) countries like Venezuela and
Nigeria were unable to save in a boom period to help them
in the current environment. He reported they were hurting
and in trouble. Group B, including Russia and Saudi Arabia
had managed to achieve some savings in the prior decade.
However, in the absence of sustainable rule-based spending
policies they were presently drawing down and depleting
their assets rapidly. He would discuss Saudi Arabia later
in the presentation as a cautionary tale. The group Alaska
wanted to associate itself with, Group C, was reforming or
considering the appropriateness of saving and spending
rules. Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Norway, Chili, and potentially
Saudi Arabia were in Group C or were moving in that
direction. He suggested that despite all of the pressure on
the SWF model, the framework was attractive for countries.
He had counted 17 countries that had drawn legislation to
create SWFs, particularly countries that had discovered
natural resources in the past decade. It was also under
consideration in a number of additional countries.
Mr. Rietveld pointed to the pie charts on slide 9: "Oil's %
of revenue & fiscal break-even price." He wanted to provide
a context of where he saw Alaska relative to other
countries that had significant resource revenues and SWFs.
He noted that the horizontal axis showed the share of
government revenue from oil. It was a measure of the
government's and the budget's dependence on oil. He
referred to the vertical axis. He wondered what kind of oil
prices were necessary to balance the books if the spending
patterns of recent years were maintained given production
volumes. The two matrices indicated Alaska being in
uncomfortable territory - it was highly dependent on oil
revenue to fund government. He reported that 80 percent of
government revenues came from oil. In good years with high
oil prices, the number could rise to 90 percent or higher.
There was another group including the Canadian province of
Alberta, the State of Wyoming, and Norway that found
themselves in a less pressured situation to the extent they
had significant revenues outside of the oil sector and the
commodity sector. Typically, these countries had high tax
rates with income taxes, corporate taxes, and additional
revenues to fall back on when oil and commodity prices
declined.
Mr. Rietveld continued that of the Middle Eastern group a
number of countries that were part of the grey grouping
(Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Kuwait) were able to cope and
balance their budgets despite their high levels of oil
dependence. He explained that these countries had moved
toward the full embrace of the SWF model. They were using
their income and the sustainable amount of draw that they
could get from their SWF assets to supplement the budget in
times of low oil prices. He relayed that Abu Dhabi, Qatar,
and Kuwait could balance their budget without significant
cuts to spending levels - oil prices being around $45 per
barrel to $60 per barrel. The red line showed that if
Alaska would similarly follow the trend towards the full
embrace of the SWF model it would move to a similar
position. In fact, he claimed that in all probability
Alaska would be able to balance its budget at an even lower
oil price than its Middle Eastern counterparts. He would
provide additional info shortly.
9:26:46 AM
Mr. Rietveld reviewed the bar graph on slide 10: "SWF
assets under management." He explained that the chart
showed the size of assets under management in US dollar
billions for a number of SWF countries. Clearly, Alaska's
was relatively small compared to other countries. He noted
that the chart showed Norway having $820 billion in assets.
Mr. Rietveld continued to slide 11: "Size of assets
relative to budget." In terms of Alaska's fiscal position,
he suggested scaling Alaska's pool of assets relative to
its budget. The numbers at the top of the chart indicated
the number of times the budget could be covered if the
accumulated assets were divided by the size of the budget.
According to the matrix, Alaska was the wealthiest country
in terms of its assets; its assets could cover almost 11
times the budget. Even some of the most established SWF
countries were nowhere near the position that Alaska was
in. They were somewhere over halfway as wealthy if the SWF
was scaled relative to the size of their budgets.
Mr. Rietveld scrolled to slide 12: "Notional sustainable
draw as a % of budget." He posed the question that if 4.5
percent was applied as a sustainable amount to draw from
the assets, how big would the draw be relative to the size
of the budget. He reported that the amount of a sustainable
draw of 4.5 on assets would equal roughly half of Alaska's
budget. For the other countries represented, the numbers
were under 30 percent. The chart illustrated the extent of
Alaska's wealth in terms of accumulated assets.
9:28:50 AM
Mr. Rietveld turned to slide 13: "Alaskan strengths and
weaknesses." He reviewed Alaska's strength and weaknesses
relative to other countries that were resource dependent
and had SWFs. He considered a number of fiscal indicators
including the outlook for raising non-oil revenues, the
production outlook, and the governance and management
structures around the actual assets. In terms of the size
of savings relative to the budget and government spending
needs, he opined that Alaska's position was particularly
strong. By his calculations, Alaska's was the strongest of
all resource dependent jurisdictions in the world. His
largest concern was the amount of money available under the
current system as accessible buffers. He understood Alaska
had various funds that were available to support the budget
in tough times. However, the amount of years of coverage of
budget spending currently accessible in the structures was
nowhere near what some of the Middle Eastern funds had
provisioned. He noted that Abu Dhabi and Qatar were able to
draw on assets to tide them over for the following 5 or 6
years and up to 10 years if they were to make some spending
cuts. Alaska's system did not have the same accessible
buffers. One of Alaska's big weaknesses was its large
fiscal dependence on oil, which limited its ability to
raise non-oil revenues compared to other areas. He pointed
out the significant benefit of Alaska having a savings rule
in its constitution. He only placed one tick in the box
because Alaska did not have a spending rule in place
appropriate for government spending needs in conjunction
with a savings rule.
9:31:31 AM
Co-Chair Neuman mentioned the state's investment in a large
diameter gas pipeline. He asked Mr. Rietveld to comment on
whether the project was a strength or weakness for the
state.
Mr. Rietveld responded that further down on the slide he
had the potential for production increases. He noted that
there was a great deal of uncertainty around how many
assets were under the ground. His assessment was based on
data used in a model that was utilized to consider the SWF
plan numbers. The baseline assumption on the model was one
of declining revenues. It was possible that there could be
a significant and highly beneficial increase in production
for Alaska in the future. He would explain what would
happen to the SWF model if it occurred. He understood there
was significant potential for increases in production and
resource revenues relative to the baseline assumption.
Mr. Rietveld continued to elaborate on slide 13. He had
placed question marks under the short-term and long-term
potential for raising non-oil revenues through taxation. He
thought the Alaskan economic base was relatively small to
achieve massive gains through taxation and it was a policy
issue for the legislature to decide. It was not obvious to
him that there was significant potential to offset the drop
in commodity revenues with other forms of revenue. He had
three thoughts about the current management of Alaska's
assets. There was no doubt that the governance structure
including the institutional rules, the independence, and
the competence of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation
(APFC) was of the standard worldwide. It was an example
that many countries sought to emulate. He continued that
the investment style pursued by APFC, relative to what was
expected, was appropriate. He added that under a SWF model
there would not be a great need for significant changes in
the portfolio or the mandate of the fund. On the
operational side, he thought there was scope for increasing
the internal capacity of APFC with the support of the
legislature and the public. Currently the corporation made
heavy use of external managers. He thought there was
potential to bring some of the management in-house. His
final point was that there could be significant benefits by
bolstering the operational and internal capacity of APFC.
9:36:24 AM
Representative Guttenberg asked him to expand on
information regarding the last line on the slide "Support
for fund staffing needs."
Mr. Rietveld responded that he checked the "dislike" box
twice because in comparison to other funds, the managers of
larger funds such as the Norwegian SWF managed by a
separate entity had figured out a way to hire and retain
the best staff. Typically, in the world of finance it could
cost a significant amount of money. It had historically
been an obstacle for many SWF to justify and explain the
staffing needs of the management institution. He made the
case that the state would achieve savings in the end by
allowing the APFC to fulfill its real staffing needs.
Representative Guttenberg thought it was something
significant to consider.
Mr. Rietveld had spoken about the SWF model and the two
critical qualifiers around the model were sustainable and
rule-based. He would speak about the critical elements of
the rule-based sustainable SWF model.
Vice-Chair Saddler had the sense that the SWF was just a
savings function. He thought that it set certain types of
funds apart from the volatility dampening or stabilization
and the investment income model. He thought he was using
SWF to imply the second two. He believed that the pure
savings, which might still be with the Alaska Permanent
Fund, was outside of the definition of a sovereign wealth
fund. He asked Mr. Rietveld for his thoughts.
Mr. Rietveld agreed with his argument. In general, things
like investment capacity were much more applicable to
savings and investment income funds with more complex
portfolios. The investment process and requirements for a
stabilization fund were simpler. He made his remarks about
support for staffing needs in relation to investment income
funds and savings funds. He believed that stabilization
funds were different beasts in terms of staffing needs.
9:40:14 AM
Vice-Chair Saddler clarified that the first definition of a
savings fund had implied no spending mechanisms. He did not
presume the legislature would be changing the PF.
Mr. Rietveld suggested that the Permanent Fund in its
current form was both a savings fund and an investment
income fund to the extent that it funded the PF dividend.
In the proposals being discussed, the question was whether
the PF moved more in the direction of an investment income
fund moved more in the direction of an investment income
fund more than currently. Vice Chair Saddler was correct
that it was in between the two.
Mr. Rietveld continued to Slide 15: "What are resource-
based SWFs really about?" He invited the committee to
consider the most important functions performed by
resource-based SWFs. He relayed that Adam Smith, the father
of economics, described mining as the most disadvantageous
lottery in the world. He might as well have been talking
about commodities in general. Uncertainty had always
accompanied commodity wealth and commodity income. The
first function of resource-based SWFs was savings -
transforming a depleting asset and depleting income stream
from finite natural resources into a permanent one. The
savings would potentially provide a stream of income
completely separated from the commodity revenue. Sovereign
wealth funds could provide macro-economic and fiscal
stability. The idea was to separate the budget process from
the fluctuation of commodity revenues and focus on the
accumulation of those commodity revenues in a financial
portfolio applying standard financial approaches based on
the size of the portfolio. It was important to answer the
question as to the sustainable amount of the assets that
could be spent by the state without depleting the corpus.
Mr. Rietveld discussed that the second function of a SWF
was that the state could completely decouple the budget
process from the underlying commodity revenues. Alaska
would be able to move away from a "boom-bust" cycle where
spending tracked commodity prices and revenues, and fiscal
policy destabilized the state's economy. The use of a SWF
was not magically making volatility disappear form the
system. Instead, volatility was being held in a place that
proponents of the SWF model felt that was more appropriate.
Currently, with the absence of the SWF model the volatility
resided on the revenue and spending side of the state's
fiscal affairs. Whereas, in the SWF model, the volatility
was transferred to the fund's level while spending and the
sustainable draw from the SWF was considerably more stable
and potentially very stable. The third purpose was a more
negative function. In the history of boom-bust economics of
resource-based economies, there was a tendency in boom
periods to overspend, make wasteful investments and deploy
boom-time commodity windfalls in economically inefficient
sectors and putting them to economically inefficient uses.
All economies were subject to absorptive capacity
constraints. In other words, there was a defined labor
pool, a limited number of ports for importing capital into
the state, and a limit to how much windfall the state could
absorb sensibly and efficiently. He suggested that in using
the SWF model the windfall would go into the SWF, the level
of the fund would rise, and the windfall would be spent
over a longer period, ameliorating some of the capacity
constraint.
9:45:05 AM
Representative Wilson remarked that the PF was already
essentially, what Mr. Rietveld was saying it was. The
difference was the state had chosen not to spend its
reserves. She thought the reason the topic was being
discussed was that the legislature was contemplating a
change in how the state provided a dividend to the people
of Alaska. She believed the state already had a fund in
place and wondered what she was missing.
Mr. Rietveld thought what was being discussed was a fully-
fledged embrace of the SWF model than what was currently in
place. First, the model dictated the greatest share of
revenues going into the fund. Currently, it was
constitutionally mandated that 25 percent of royalties went
into the fund and had historically been 30 percent. Under a
SWF model, a greater share of revenues would go into the
fund rather than the direct budgeting process. Second, a
greater share of sustainable draw or investment income from
the fund would be available for spending. The proposal was
to change the magnitude of resource revenue and income that
came out of the system. It operated in a similar way but a
greater share of revenue would go into the PF and a larger
sustainable draw would come out of the fund.
Representative Thompson remarked that there would be a more
detailed discussion on the topic in the following week.
Representative Wilson wanted to understand the difference
between what Alaska already had in place and what was being
proposed using the SWF model. It seemed to her that whether
the state used the current model or the one Mr. Rietveld
was proposing the state would end up with the same amount
of revenue. She wanted to understand the changes being
suggested.
Representative Gara recapped the difference between what
the state was currently doing and what Representative
Wilson proposed. In addition to revenue used for state
spending, a certain amount would be dedicated to a fund
that would generate additional revenue. It would become an
endowment fund. In other words, revenue would be divided
into two pools: one pool would go directly into the budget
and another would go into a fund that generated investment
revenue. The sovereign wealth fund proposal was to shift a
significant amount into a SWF to generate investment
revenues that would be used to supplement annual revenue.
He asked if he was correct.
Mr. Rietveld responded in the affirmative. He clarified
that the SWF model was not his proposal; he was a strong
proponent. He acknowledged Representative Gara's
description was correct. The most important additional
benefit the state would receive from transferring a greater
share of revenues into the fund and a greater share of
investment income out of the fund was stability and
breaking the cycle of spending. The sustainable draw was a
stable concept. Whereas, spending 70 percent to 75 percent
of oil revenues (practiced historically) it created a
significant volatility in spending. The critical
distinction of what was being proposed was that the SWF
model would change the magnitude of investment income to
fund government and would transfer volatility from the
budget process to the SWF structure.
9:50:41 AM
Mr. Rietveld moved to slide 16: "Oil to equities." He
offered that another way of thinking about the SWF concept
was what the Norwegians had described as transforming oil
to equities. He noted that financial assets and financial
portfolios were subject to risk and volatility. However, in
looking at historical data and patterns financial assets
had higher returns and lower levels of volatility than oil.
Therefore, it could be argued, from a financial standpoint,
that it was advantageous to transform subsoil assets and
revenues derived from subsoil assets into financial ones.
Mr. Rietveld explained slide 17: "Oil to equities: what
would you rather hold?" He pointed out that the chart
reflected a period from 1928 to 2010. The dark blue line at
the top represented the growth of the value of stocks. He
noted that the vertical axis went from 10 to 100 to 1,000.
He concluded that stocks had generated considerably higher
returns historically than oil represented by the light blue
line and bonds [in yellow] and money markets [in green]. He
highlighted the volatility of the oil line on the chart.
Essentially, oil returns were very similar to bond and
money market returns but at a much greater volatility if a
state was holding all of its wealth in the form of oil.
Mr. Rietveld scrolled to slide 18: "Oil to equities: what
would you rather hold?" He relayed that the Norwegians used
a measure referred to as "Value at Risk" to quantify the
risk to the value of their petroleum under the ground. The
higher the bar on the chart, the more the value was at risk
of the asset under the ground. Although they had an $850
billion financial endowment, the assets were considerably
less at risk than if it was held in oil and less at risk
than the petroleum that they held under the ground. At
every opportunity, the Norwegians tried to transfer their
oil wealth and oil income into financial wealth and
financial income.
Mr. Rietveld turned to Slide 19: "Key elements of a rule-
based SWF model." He emphasized the importance of the
process operated by way of rules - both a savings rule and
a spending rule. He elaborated that in the absence of
rules, even with the best intentions, the tendency was for
those intentions to break down in tough times and to
abandon an implicit rule. He thought a savings rule was
worthy to deliberate. He suggested considering what
percentage of revenue to transfer to the SWF. If there were
different sub funds such as a stabilization fund and an
income fund, it would be important to think about the rules
that govern the flows between the funds. In terms of
spending, it depended on the fund's purpose. For instance,
the fund could be in place to provide short-term stability
to the budget or, it could be in place to replace the
source of funding for government through investment income.
He restated the importance of considering rules on the
savings side, which he thought were largely in place with
Alaska's constitutional protection of a minimum. However,
he recommended that the proposed changes to the spending
rules needed to be properly vetted ensuring that the
mechanisms were rule-based.
9:54:37 AM
Mr. Rietveld discussed Slide 20: "Why have a rule?" He
relayed his thoughts on the benefits of having a rule. He
surmised that like all rules, the idea was to constrain the
discretion of policy makers, legislators, and governments.
He suggested that memories tended to be short in oil rich
jurisdictions that were subject to historical boom-bust
periods. He added that because of the fiscal pain commodity
producers were currently experiencing, the tendency was to
do catch-up spending once prices recovered. If countries
were able to save some of the "boom," it would be much
easier to manage any downfalls. Alaska had accumulated
assets because of the prudence of legislation and the
prudence of previous legislatures that insured the
occurrence of inflation proofing and sticking to the rules
in place.
Mr. Rietveld spoke of the limitations of human ability to
forecast oil prices and revenues. Academic studies showed
that it was impossible to forecast them accurately. In the
absence of a rule, forming a budget was entirely
unpredictable. In contrast, a rule would prevent spending
if oil prices were higher than expected. The excess
revenues would go into the SWF. Once the value of the
assets increased, the state could adjust the rule through a
periodic review and adjust the sustainable draw. It was
unreasonable to think the state could accurately forecast
oil prices and form a stable and sustainable budget on it.
Mr. Rietveld emphasized the importance of rules being
symmetric or counter-cyclical. In other words, it was
important that the rules applied to both commodity booms
and busts. Otherwise, there was a tendency to save in a
boom period and to act freely in a bust period. It was very
important that the rules were binding for boom and bust
periods.
Another attractive feature of having a rule in place and
being able to communicate the rule clearly was expectation
management for medium to long-term fiscal policy. He
thought it applied to ratings agencies, businesses and
investors, and the public. Ratings agencies that assessed
the credit worthiness of Alaska would take comfort from a
long-term plan embedded with a set of rules. Historically
assessors of credit worthiness looked favorably on a rule-
based system. It was also important to manage the
expectations of businesses. It was his understanding that
businesses in Alaska were asking for a plan that provided
fiscal stability before deciding to increase long-term
investment in the state. He suggested that having a rule-
based system in place and being able to communicate the
long-term plan would be useful in managing expectations of
businesses and investors. He asserted that the public would
also benefit in their own financial planning, savings, and
through their most important assets, typically their home
values. There was a historical correlation between oil
prices, oil revenues, government spending, and home values
in Alaska. He concluded that a rule-based system that
embedded stability would help households and the public to
manage their own fiscal affairs.
9:58:48 AM
Representative Edgmon asked him to explain why the
legislature should enact the model as soon as possible
rather than waiting.
Representative Thompson added, "The urgency why."
Mr. Rietveld responded that he looked at the money
available under the current system to plug the short-term
deficit. He saw that there was coverage available for two
or three years. He believed Alaska had the tools and assets
at the legislature's disposal to fund the deficit more
sustainably. In answer to Representative Edgmon's question,
the state would draw down on the limited buffer of
available funds. The risk was that if the legislature
kicked the can down the road the system would be at greater
risk and the SWF model would require roughly four times the
annual budget-spending amount in a cash reserve structure.
The state would have to replenish the fund if it were to
run down further in the current year. There would be a
concern around the willingness of policy makers and
legislators to deplete reserve buffers further at a time of
pressing fiscal issues.
Representative Edgmon would follow up with additional
questions later.
Representative Gattis was thinking about the spending
aspect. She remarked that the state had historically
brought programs back during boom periods. She thought
there was merit to having a budget, like having a household
budget. She believed a person had to save for a rainy day.
She liked the aspect of limiting state spending when there
was money and saving it for a rainy day.
10:02:18 AM
Mr. Rietveld surmised the state was calculating its
financial wealth and changing the mindset of the people who
formulated and approved the budget to a concept of a
sustainable annuity like a household that lived on a
financial endowment. A person thought about a sustainable
level of spending given their financial wealth. They did
not deviate from their budget; they knew their budget and
planned accordingly.
Mr. Rietveld detailed Slide 22: "Existing approaches to
rules." He cited that there were three types of savings
rules. The first rule was to save a fixed percentage of
either some or all commodity revenues. Alaska
constitutionally mandated depositing 25 percent of
royalties into savings; however, in practice, the
percentage had been 30 percent. Another rule was to have a
moving average of either revenues or prices. If, in any
fiscal year, the state exceed the moving average, it would
be required to place the exceeded portion into savings. The
third savings rule was to have a reference price of $75 per
barrel of oil. If prices were $90 per barrel then the
percentage difference would be calculated and put into
savings. They were simple rule-of-thumb savings measures.
He qualified that it was better to have the three savings
rules than to not have any. There were potential problems
with only having the three rules in place. He elaborated
that there was a pro-cyclicality of a fixed percentage
savings if a stabilizing spending rule was not in place to
offset it. It meant that even in the toughest times the
fixed percentage would need to be transferred the fixed
percentage to the savings pool. Some people might say that
it made more sense to save in grim times and find a way to
reduce savings in tough times. The problem with a reference
price was determining who set the reference price and the
appropriateness of the price. A few years prior $100 price
might have seemed appropriate. Presently, it did not appear
that oil prices would return to $100 per barrel any time
soon. He suggested that from a governance and policy
perspective it was very difficult to know who would
determine the reference price. The rule-of-thumb measures
on their own were good rules for accumulating assets.
However, they were not particularly useful in combining the
spending and savings decisions into one unified framework,
especially one that provided stability to spending.
10:05:42 AM
Mr. Rietveld continued to Slide 23: "A fiscal rule for
resource-based SWFs." He advised making some conceptual
departures when considering a complete rule-based fiscal
framework that had both spending a savings rules. He
encouraged members to move away from thinking of the budget
first then savings as an afterthought. In the SWF model, a
much greater share of assets flowed first to the SWF and
then out of the SWF in the form of a sustainable investment
income. Changing the piping was essential. He highlighted
that the first place of resource revenue went into the SWF.
By doing so, the fund and the level of assets held in the
fund was the place in the fiscal system where the burden of
adjustment to volatility took place rather than in the
budget itself. The concept applied as much to booms as it
did to busts. In boom periods, the burden of adjustment
would happen in the SWF. The Sovereign Wealth Funds would
rise rather than spending. In bust periods, SWF assets
might decline rather than spending. The Sovereign Wealth
Fund became the volatile element.
Mr. Rietveld explained that by adopting the SWF model the
state would achieve the goal of decoupling spending
decisions and the budget process from the underlying
volatility of commodity revenue. The concept was that by
transforming oil wealth into financial wealth and assessing
a sustainable draw on that financial wealth, the amount
would become the achievable and sustainable amount of
spending. It would be completely uncorrelated to what was
actually happening with oil prices and oil commodities in
the previous or current year. His final point was that if
production increased significantly in the state and
commodity revenues exceeded current baseline expectations,
the spending increase would spread out over a number of
years because of a higher level of the SWF and through
periodic reassessments of the sustainable draw size. He
added that it was equally important to remember that if
revenue decreased an adjustment to the draw size would take
place. Spending would also have to adjust down over time.
The burden would be spread over time through the level of
the SWFs.
Co-Chair Thompson made the comment that the price of oil
was frequently talked about but he thought Alaska also had
to be cognitive of declining production. The price of oil
could sharply increase, but less production would affect
the state.
10:09:28 AM
Representative Wilson asked about a spending level amount
provided at the end of December each year. She used $3
billion as an example asking if the legislature's job would
remain to decide how to spend those funds. The only
adjustment the state would have if the spending level
amount decreased would be to pass taxes that would go back
into the SWF with the hope of the spending level increasing
the following year.
Mr. Rietveld answered that Representative Wilson had
provided an accurate description of what would happen. He
added that a prudent and popular approach worldwide would
not be to make the assessment annually, but perhaps every
four years. The review would check the essential components
of the model and the assumptions guiding it were still in
place. He thought four years was too long and one year was
too short. Another suggestion was to make periodic
assessments in conjunction with the periodic assessments of
the Permanent Fund. The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation
could make the assessment at the same time or shortly
before reviewing the central elements of the fiscal rule
and fiscal framework in order to get APFC's input and an
explanation for why it believed the assumed target return
was still achievable.
Co-Chair Thompson assumed that with a certain amount of
earnings there would be a set draw amount each year. The
state would have four times the amount set aside and
conduct a review every two or four years.
Mr. Rietveld responded in the positive.
10:12:51 AM
Representative Wilson mentioned having savings in addition
to revenues. She wondered if the money to appropriate would
be a calculation. There would be a limited amount to
allocate because there was no other source to tap for
funding. In other words, everything would go through the
SWF. She asked if that was how the plan worked.
Mr. Rietveld indicated that Representative Wilson was
correct.
Vice-Chair Saddler mentioned that some people wanted to
close the barn door when the horse was gone saying that the
state should have a spending cap or hard other rule. He
wondered if the SWF had a mechanism to manage an increase
annually or to have a hard spending cap or any other rules.
Mr. Rietveld responded that there were other rules and
spending caps that could be applied in varying degrees. He
thought for a commodity dependent jurisdiction the SWF was
a tried and tested model. Legislation could be introduced
to put a budget cap on the fund. He believed that in the
SWF model the number was based on an assessment of what was
sustainable investment income.
Vice-Chair Saddler commented that a global change in
economic conditions that proved 4.5 percent was no longer
sustainable could trigger the necessity to reassess the
model or change the rule.
Co-Chair Thompson remarked that the state would still be
able to make up the differences through taxes or other
means.
Representative Kawasaki asked about a separate account in
which funds could be deposited prior to being appropriated.
He noted having to have four times the amount in the
earnings reserve to make a SWF plan work.
Co-Chair Thompson remarked that the topic would be
discussed in the future.
10:16:15 AM
Co-Chair Neuman opined that the biggest impediment to Mr.
Rietveld's SWF model was politics. He remarked that the
stock market was declining and that there could be a
drawdown of the reserves. He understood that the model
required approximately four years of reserves for potential
downturns in the economy. He estimated the amount to be
about $13 billion. He thought the problem would be in the
stresses in government. The public had certain wants and
needs, which he attributed to the growth in spending. He
wondered if the state was better off keeping politics out
of the mix and staying away from using the PF to fund
government. He argued that the PF should focus on funding
the endowment fund. He asked if he was accurate.
Mr. Rietveld agreed that if the state adopted the SWF
framework it would be important to make sure APFC continued
to make investment decisions based purely on financial
objectives. It would have a clearly articulated return
target visible to the public and to legislators. It would
be critical for the PF team to be left alone to pursue
prudent investment decisions to achieve the target.
Co-Chair Neuman was concerned with keeping politics out of
the scenario. He mentioned that currently there were
members of the governor's cabinet that sat on the PF board.
He asked Mr. Rietveld if he thought it was better not to
have any person from a government agency sitting on the PF
board to avoid political influence.
Mr. Rietveld did not see a categorical problem with the
composition of the APFC board. It seemed to be in keeping
with what the best SWFs did worldwide to have a range of
people represented on the board. He mentioned that APFC had
extremely high levels of transparency in place under which
they operated. The corporation also operated under high
levels of accountability, which he thought, offset the risk
of undue political intervention. He did not have a problem
with the make-up and added that it was well governed and
well managed.
Co-Chair Neuman asked about reducing the risk of political
interference.
Mr. Rietveld answered that he was unable to provide a "yes"
or "no" answer to his question. He stated, "It works."
10:20:52 AM
Vice-Chair Saddler asked if it was usual for a SWF to
transform itself from one model to another such as from a
stabilization model to a pure savings or to an investment.
He thought it was asking a lot to put away money rather
than responding to legitimate needs of people to spend it.
He wondered how often people could be asked to change a
model.
Mr. Rietveld stated that there was not a SWF in existence,
around more than five years, that had not changed. The most
obvious change for funds was to transition from being a
pure savings fund to being an investment income fund. It
was a very prevalent and widespread pattern. There were
also changes in the balance between stabilization purposes
and income purposes. He indicated changes were very common.
Representative Guttenberg stated that the state had two
major assets: money in the bank and oil in the ground. He
remarked that the SWF liked the SWF. He thought the two
assets should flow into the SWF rather than other revenue
sources such as gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco taxes. He
asked if using the other sources of revenue was part of the
model.
Mr. Rietveld responded that both things happened. He
clarified that some countries and jurisdictions ran all
revenues through the SWF. The most important thing the
legislature could do conceptually was to put the volatile
revenues into the SWF. If there were other sources of
revenue that were more stable, more predictable, and more
sustainable, he did not necessarily see why they would have
to run through the fund. The most important thing was to
put the volatile and potentially declining revenue source
into the SWF.
10:24:02 AM
Representative Pruitt asked about the timing of changing
from a savings to an income fund. He suggested that if the
state had changed the model in the last downturn when the
PF was about $28 billion, it would not have grown to its
current amount. He wondered if the state was deciding to
switch the model and limiting the eventual opportunity to
grow the fund even more than 48 percent of government
spending. He asked about the timing of the change. He
thought it was an important part of the discussion. He
asked if the state was knee jerking to a crisis.
Mr. Rietveld thought the assessment was based on there
being a current crisis due to oil prices. He noted that the
SWF was one way to address the fiscal issues in a prudent
manner. He did not see a downside to implementing the model
because if oil revenues did recover, revenues would still
flow into the SWF and allow for greater government
spending. It would be spread over several decades. The fund
would appreciate through additional oil revenues.
Government revenue would respond but the response would be
spread out over several years, decades or potentially into
perpetuity. He thought it was an opportune time to apply
the model especially since the state had accumulated a nice
pool of assets. The state was in a position to implement a
policy where it could make use of a sustainable draw.
Representative Gattis asked if the state was putting all of
its eggs in one basket, the stock market basket. She was
concerned with the market crashing.
Mr. Rietveld suggested she was right that the state's
portfolio would be subject to volatility. His observation
was that the PFs asset allocation was highly diversified.
The goal was to achieve diversification benefits including
assets that were uncorrelated. It was not to say that all
volatility would be eliminated. However, he believed (as
indicated in the slides pertaining to Norway) financial
assets had historically provided a better return at lower
risk than oil. He concluded that the state would be moving
eggs from one basket to a bigger basket that was less
fragile based on historic data. His second point was that
the state had to deal with the fact that it had its wealth
in oil and financial wealth. He believed oil was more
volatile than financial assets. However, the state did not
have personal income taxes, unlike Norway with a personal
income tax of 55 percent. He opined that the baseline for
Alaska would be to transform as much oil wealth and income
into financial wealth and income.
10:28:59 AM
Mr. Rietveld skipped to slide 27: "Saudi Arabian report."
He noted the work he had done on Saudi Arabia. It was an
illustrative case of what could happen in the absence of
rule-based policies. Saudi Arabia was the world's largest
oil producer, which was potentially being challenged by
Russia and the United States presently. It had the cheapest
oil and a century or more of subsoil oil revenues at the
lowest extraction price. Prior to the oil price collapse
Saudi Arabia had about $850 billion in accumulated assets.
It seemed that not much could go wrong for Saudi Arabia
from a fiscal perspective. However, the absence of rules
caused a significant amount of ruin.
Mr. Rietveld turned to Slide 28: "Saudi Arabia's problems:
lessons for Alaska?: Estimated Oil Price Required to
Balance 2015 Budget." He reported that already Saudi Arabia
needed a very high oil price, despite its massive oil
production, to balance its budget. It needed an oil price
in excess of $100 per barrel based on recent years'
spending. There was not a significant amount of give.
Mr. Rietveld advanced to slide 29: "Saudi Arabia's
Problems: lessons for Alaska? Projected Breakeven Oil
Price." He commented that the projection was for the
breakeven oil price to continue rising significantly drive
by demographic pressures. The country had a very young
population and it made significant social welfare and
subsidy payouts.
10:30:39 AM
Mr. Rietveld turned to slide 30: "Saudi Arabia's problems:
lessons for Alaska? Budgeted and Actual Government
Spending." He reported that a very common problem in a
resource-based economy was that spending just adjusted to
the increase in oil revenues as it did in Saudi Arabia. He
pointed out that the green lines represented the budgeted
spending. Saudi Arabia consistently overspent the budget by
15 percent to 20 percent annually which was a way of not
saving as much as should have been saved.
Mr. Rietveld continued to Slide 31: "Saudi Arabia's
problems: lessons for Alaska?: Oil-Driven Cyclicality in
Capital Spending." He relayed that a familiar pattern to
people in Alaska was the historic correlation between oil
prices (represented in blue) and capital spending (shown in
green). The boom-bust cycles in capital spending were
devastating given that Saudi Arabia had not sufficiently
decoupled the budget process from oil price volatility.
Mr. Rietveld discussed the policy recommendations for Saudi
Arabia listed on slide 32. First, he recommended adopting
explicit spending and savings rules. It had happened to
some extent but in an ad-hoc fashion. Because of their ad-
hoc mechanism, they had drawn down on assets to the tune of
$200 billion since the oil price collapse. In some calendar
months, approximately $37 billion to $40 billion was
withdrawn. He had tried to calculate what would have
happened if Saudi Arabia had implemented the rule-based
framework that he proposed in the Harvard paper in 2004 or
2004. He showed that the country under-saved in the absence
of a saving rule even though they went to $850 billion.
Calculations indicated they should have been at least at
$1.4 trillion, which would have put them in a much better
position. Delays were costly and had been for Saudi Arabia.
He also thought delaying reforms in the same direction in
other jurisdictions would also be costly.
Mr. Rietveld also proposed a clearer separation of
stabilization funds and investment income funds. He had
given names to the funds and placed some numbers around the
existing asset pools. He also suggested a governance
structure for the investment management and oversight of
the investment management function. It was made to fit the
Saudi political realities. In general, though he would have
moved it towards what Alaska had in place already in the
form of the APFC.
Mr. Rietveld relayed that he had a couple of slides
regarding Saudi oil policies but because they were slightly
off topic, concluded with three points. First, Alaska was
by no means alone in terms of adjusting to a potentially
protracted era of lower commodity prices and the role that
its accumulated financial assets could play. He continued
that the magnitude of savings made Alaska exceptional. It
was a distinct positive for Alaska in dealing with its
fiscal issues.
Mr. Rietveld relayed that at the heart and spirit of the
governor's proposed plan there were two important points
included. The first point was that it was critical to
manage volatility better by decoupling budget spending from
the underlying commodity cycle and placing volatility in
the SWF. The second point was that it was critical to
facilitate the transition of government funding itself
through investment income derived from a financial
portfolio infused with oil revenues.
10:35:07 AM
Representative Edgmon thought more stability within
Alaska's economy would provide the opportunity to create a
better business climate and to diversify the economy down
the road. Given the recent newness of SWFs, he asked Mr.
Rietveld to point to particular countries that had
accomplished something similar.
Mr. Rietveld responded that boom-bust cycles and commodity
dependence was a great hindrance to long-term investment in
any country or any state. To the extent that the hindrance
could be removed would be positive to the overall
investment and business climates. He added that there was
literature on the resource curse that spoke to the
particular ailment referred to as the "Dutch Disease." In a
commodity boom there were certain sectors booming
disproportionately to the rest of the economy. Capital
flooded into certain sectors such as housing and
construction rather than being efficiently allocated across
a broad spectrum of the economy. Countries that had used
the SWF model included Norway. Norway discovered
significant oil reserves in the 1970s and had been able to
maintain a diversified economy because of the SWF model and
not becoming fixated on the commodity cycle. He thought the
same applied to Australia and to some extent Alberta,
Canada. There was a tried and tested track record of
jurisdictions able to diversify their economies - they were
jurisdictions that had been able to remove themselves from
being beholden to the commodity cycle and commodity
revenues.
10:37:22 AM
Representative Pruitt commented that the discussion was not
about stabilizing Alaska's economy, but rather about
stabilizing government expenditures into the future. He
asked if a key part was missing in the overall discussion.
He thought that the legislature should be looking at
certain things to ensure a diversified economy. Alaska was
still not dealing with the 700 thousand people that were
not directly employed by or associated with government. He
wondered if the state would solve the issue of
diversification with the SWF model. He thought it was
important to discuss opening up the state's land to further
development opportunities, which in turn could generate
jobs and circulate money back into the economy. He believed
it was important to consider ways other than oil to
generate revenue.
Representative Thompson remarked that it sounded like a
policy discussion for the legislature to have in the
future.
Mr. Rietveld responded that he thought there was a deep
conversation that needed to take place regarding
opportunities to diversify the Alaskan economy. He argued
that the SWF at least made it possible to have that
conversation. If government exacerbated boom-bust cycles,
it would play a very destructive role in diversifying the
economy. He agreed that a separate conversation was
necessary. However, he believed fiscal stability and fiscal
prudence needed to happen first.
Representative Pruitt asked if it was appropriate for the
legislature to avoid referring to the SWF model as a means
of diversifying Alaska's economy.
Mr. Rietveld thought the appropriate way to frame the
discussion was that the state would be diversifying and
stabilizing its fiscal income sources rather than
contributing to the diversification of the entire economy -
a significant intermediate step to achieving
diversification. It was imperative to make sure the fiscal
footing was stable and that government fiscal policy was
not a hindrance to the stability and diversification of the
Alaskan economy.
Co-Chair Thompson invited additional questions and
announced the agenda for the afternoon meeting.
ADJOURNMENT
10:42:25 AM
The meeting was adjourned at 10:42 a.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| HFIN- SWF Presentation_malan rietveld 1-28-16.pdf |
HFIN 1/28/2016 9:00:00 AM |
|
| SWF-HFIN Saudi paper.pdf |
HFIN 1/28/2016 9:00:00 AM |
|
| SWF-HFIN Fiscal Monitor Commodities Roller Coaster (Oct. 15).pdf |
HFIN 1/28/2016 9:00:00 AM |