Complete freedom for county authorities (Nationen)

Forget project grants and specially earmarked financial allocations. The country’s county authorities will now be given full control over their own money. Local authority business development funds can be set up, while the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund (SND) is in danger of not getting a penny. The scheme will be included in next year’s national budget proposal to be announced in a week’s time. According to Local Government and Regional Affairs Minister Erna Solberg it will be accompanied by a NOK 100 million increase in total allocations to Norway’s county authorities. "The county authorities will receive all their central government funding allocations in one lump sum. But they will not then have the opportunity to apply for more cash," she told Nationen. One week before the budget is due to be announced, the Minister has revealed that she plans a complete reform of the county authorities’ finances. The changes will be implemented as early as next year. Together with the cash payout comes a message from the Local Government and Regional Affairs Minister to use the money as the county authorities themselves see fit.

Progress Party balloons (Dagsavisen)

Carl I. Hagen and the Progress Party have walked off with large numbers of the governing coalition’s voters. According to a poll carried out by AC Nielsen on behalf of the Newspapers’ News Agency (ANB), the Progress Party now has the backing of 25.8 per cent of the electorate. The Progress Party just gets bigger and bigger – and is doing so at the expense of the governing coalition parties. 11 per cent of those who voted Christian Democrat at the last election now say they would vote for the Progress Party if there were a general election tomorrow. Three per cent of those who voted Conservative at the last election now prefer the Progress Party.

Hagen prepares Progress Party for office (Verdens Gang)

Carl I. Hagen, chairman of the Progress Party, is preparing the party to govern the country. He is now working on the Progress Party’s inaugural address – with himself in the role of Prime Minister. This could turn up the heat still more during this autumn’s budget negotiations. "By virtue of our size and internal stability it is probable that in a ten-year perspective the Progress Party could enter negotiations with the aim of forming a majority government. That is why we are obliged to make such contingency plans," Mr Hagen told VG.

SAS could be forced to raise fares (Aftenposten)

SAS and Braathens could be forced to raise the cost of their cut-price tickets on flights between Oslo and Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger and Tromsø. The Norwegian Competition Authority is considering whether to order a compulsory fare increase, which would make air travel more expensive for thousands of Norwegians. The objective is to prevent SAS from squeezing the newly launched budget airline, Norwegian (NAS), out of the market by dumping the price of tickets on routes where they are in direct competition with Norwegian and making up the losses by maintaining higher prices on routes on which SAS has a monopoly.

Norwegian doing better than expected (Dagens Næringsliv)

Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) currently has a seat occupancy rate of 52 per cent, which according to the company’s management is better than budgeted. "Things are going to plan and we are seeing a steady improvement in the seat occupancy rate on board our planes," said company chairman Bjørn Kjos. "We remain convinced that we will succeed in bringing our operations to break-even during the autumn, and could even manage to make a little money before the end of the year," he said. No one in Norwegian’s management was prepared to say how much money the company is currently losing on its flights.

Norwegian consumers tempted to borrow billions (Dagsavisen)

Norwegian consumers have never owed so much. Unsecured loans are being aggressively marketed, with offers being made by SMS. Now even the debt collection industry has reacted to the ease with which private individuals can borrow money. And Norwegians allow themselves to be tempted. Never before have the country’s debt collection agencies had so much to recover in unpaid debts. Among the registered debt collection agencies the figure has climbed to NOK 39.8 billion. "If you add the unregistered debt collection agencies, the amount of defaulted debts approaches NOK 66 billion. This is higher than it has ever been before," said Thor A. Andersen, general secretary of the Norwegian Association of Debt Collectors.

Fears of oil disaster in northern Norway (Aftenposten)

Russia wants to build a gigantic oil terminal in Murmansk from which it plans to ship oil to the USA. The project would dramatically increase the amount of oil being transported along the Norwegian coast, and environmental experts are warning that an accident could have disastrous consequences for fish stocks in the Barents Sea. "This is the biggest ever environmental threat in the northern region," says Bellona.

PGS heading for partition (Dagens Næringsliv)

Jens Ulltveit-Moe, president of the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry (NHO), could open the way for PGS to be partitioned. In recent days the French company, CGG, has been increasing its stake in PGS and is out to get his hands on the seismic exploration part of the Norwegian company. DN is given to understand that CGG has bought PGS shares in both the US and Norwegian markets in the past few days. Yesterday the French seismic company officially flagged that its shareholding had reached 7.5 per cent. CGG has made no secret of its motives. "Our share purchases are a signal that we are willing to contribute to a consolidation in the seismic industry. A merger with PGS’s seismic business has been an ambition of ours for many years," said Christophe Pettenati-Auzilère, CGG’s head of strategy.

Ulltveit-Moe is already the winner (Klassekampen)

Jens Ulltveit-Moe, president of the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry (NHO), will today become even more powerful. He is already the winner in the struggle to gain control of PGS, the world’s largest seismic and oilfield services company. PGS was founded in 1991 by Reidar Michaelsen, the current chairman, who announced his resignation as chief executive in August when Jens Ulltveit-Moe revealed he was planning to take over the company. Mr Ulltveit-Moe wants to demote PGS’s founder to an ordinary board member when he takes over as chairman at today’s general meeting of shareholders. Mr Ulltveit-Moe announced on Wednesday his proposal for the composition of a new board in which he has thrown out the US shareholders in favour of Norwegian board members. Much of the power struggle ahead of the PGS general meeting has been between Norwegian and US shareholder groups. This is a kind of norwegianization of PGS, whose company language is English and whose field of operation includes the entire world.

No more free travel for Auditor General’s wife (Aftenposten)

The rules governing publicly funded holiday and sightseeing trips for the Auditor General’s wife will be tightened up – though the Auditor General himself will not be given a specific reprimand. From now on his wife will only be allowed to accompany him on occasions when she carries out "duties of international cooperation and official representation". It is not enough simply to have been invited. "I feel this is a clear tightening up of the rules, because the rules have not previously been explicit enough," said Ågot Valla (Socialist Left Party), president of the Odelstinget. "It must be up to the Office of the Auditor General’s senior management team to determine which trips the Auditor General’s wife can participate in. But when we say that the trips must be of significance for the Office’s work, it makes it clear that the threshold for taking along one’s spouse is extremely high. The kind of trips reported in VG would probably fall outside that definition," said Ms Valla.

Worth Noting

• American FBI agents questioned Mullah Krekar for two hours at the prison in the Netherlands in which he is being held about his alleged connections with the al-Qaida terrorist movement and Saddam Hussein. The FBI will resume their interrogation next week.
  (Verdens Gang)
• The last couple of days’ upturn on the Oslo Stock Exchange has generated a budding optimism among investors. But none of the stock brokers Dagens Næringsliv has spoken to believe there will be a sustained rise in share prices before the threat of war in Iraq has passed.
  (Dagens Næringsliv)
• For the first time ever senior Conservatives have publicly questioned the secrecy with which the Conservative Party’s Oslo branch surrounds its financial supporters. Behind the controversy is the harsh spotlight which has been brought to bear on the Conservative’s Oslo branch because it is the only branch which fails to disclose any information about how much it receives in cash donations, and from whom. A majority of the city’s municipal councillors have now called on the Conservatives’ Oslo branch to publish the names of its benefactors.
  (Aftenposten)
• Statoil has chosen technical solutions for its Snow White gas field development which make it difficult for Norwegian construction yards to compete for contracts, according to Knut Aaneland, industry chief at the Federation of Norwegian Engineering Industries (TBL).
  (Dagens Næringsliv)
• Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik must prepare himself for an autumn of defeat after defeat. The Labour Party wants to force the Government to clarify its position in relation to the Progress Party. Jens Stoltenberg is not willing to enter into a collaboration with the PM unless the budget gets a visibly Labour profile. Carl I. Hagen and the Progress Party will not back the budget unless Mr Bondevik lays billions of kroner in oil revenues on the table.
  (Dagbladet)
• Hospital waiting lists are getting shorter and shorter. At the end of August the number of patients waiting for hospital treatment had been reduced by over 7 per cent compared with the same period last year.
  (NTB)

Today’s comment from Aftenposten

Auditor General Bjarne Mørk-Eidem has had a rough few days after VG documented that he had on numerous occasions taken his wife with him on foreign trips which seem to have been filled more with exotic experiences than hard work. The trips were paid for out of public funds and were approved by the Office of the Auditor General’s senior management team. We are puritanical in Norway when it comes to mixing official duty and private pleasure at public expense. This is one of the reasons that we – hopefully with due cause – can pat ourselves on the back for having an incorrupt civil service and honest politicians. And in this tradition the Auditor General acts as guarantor for our faith in the public service. Knowing this simple fact should have been enough to make Mr Mørk-Eidem exercise particular caution before he took his wife on trips at public expense. No one should be given reason to doubt that it is official necessity rather than private gratification which decides the composition of the Auditor General’s delegation. The Oslo Tax Office has now given notice that it will be investigating Mr Mørk-Eidem’s tax affairs. This is a strong signal that just such doubts have arisen, which make it all the more peculiar that the Storting absolves the Auditor General of wrongdoing on the one hand, while at the same time saying that the rules should be tightened. The Auditor General and the Storting’s Presidium are routinely considered to be pillars of society. But in the treatment of Bjarne Mørk-Eidem’s foreign travel activities, dignity has given way to parody.