Central banks and sovereign-wealth funds all over the world have increased purchases of the Norwegian krone and Swedish krona. According to The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, central banks and sovereign-wealth funds from Poland, Russia, Indonesia, and several East Asian countries are interested in buying of Scandinavian currencies.
Officially the information is not checked out. In Norway it was said that there is no information about buyers, Russia's central bank refused to give commentaries on the situation. In Poland the central bank showed the statistical data for 2012 when local central bank held 7% of the reserves in the Norwegian krone. In contrast to the data, in 2009, the krone's share was just 5%, and there was no Norwegian currency in Polish reserves in 2007.
Traditionally, the central banks hold their reserves in five currencies: the US dollar, euro, British pound sterling, Japanese yen, and the Swiss frank. Recently the banks tried to diverse their investments by means of the Australian and Canadian dollars. According to official data provided by the Russia's central bank, by the end of the third quarter of 2012, in country's reserves the Canadian dollar amounted to 1.4%, the Australian dollar, to 0.7% in particular. Financial stability of Norway and Sweden, as both countries have the highest credit rating, is a plus. Moreover, Norway has a $740 billion sovereign-wealth fund invested by revenues from exorbitant oil prices; this hydrocarbon is the country's major export product. This “air bag” makes Norway economy stable and resilient. For the last year, the US dollar has depreciated 10 percent to 6.55 SEK per USD, as well as it depreciated 5.3 percent to 5.8 NOK per USD.
