23 April 2009

East Timor: Struggling on a $6bn pot that keeps growing

Eric Ellis April 23, 2009 East Timor's oil fund is thriving thanks to boring investment. IN THE East Timorese capital's joke of a "financial district", roosters scratch in the dust as a family of goats bleat at vendors selling porn CDs, "jiggy-jig" as they sleazily hiss at passers-by.

It's a sad and unlikely place to spawn a master of the global financial universe, inasmuch as any still exist after the economic conflagration. But in his makeshift office by the bank building, Timorese civil servant Venancio Alves Maria is doing something the storied Temaseks, the Warren Buffets and Citigroups in more sophisticated time zones away can't boast. He's making money.

Alves Maria is the executive director of the Petroleum Fund of Timor-Leste, the Government authority entrusted to invest the oil and gas royalties deriving from the Timor Sea fields between East Timor and the Northern Territory. After barely four years, the fund has about $6 billion invested, about eight times East Timor's non-resources GDP. The fund gets about $250-300 million added to it every month, and has returned 3 to 5 per cent annually since its inception in mid-2005. In a world where the trillions of investments lost by crooks, frauds and desk-jockey cowboys require responding trillions in taxpayer-funded government bail-outs, Venancio and his fund stand out as stellar performers.

So what's his secret? The short answer is bad politicians. Such is the chaos East Timor has descended to in the decade since it broke free from its Indonesian military colonisers, its warring political clans can't agree on how to diversify their petrodollar bounty. So Indonesia-educated Venancio and his board take the only legally required default option open to them, plunging it all in the most boring investment around — US Treasury bonds.

The Timor fund is a minnow in the world's sovereign fund ocean, but its returns make it one of the world's best-performing sovereign wealth fund in the past year. Read the full story...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ba ita Timor oan hotu, ida nee hanesan realidade ida hatudu ba ita katak lei fundu petroleu nebe agora ita iha ne maka fo kontribuisaun ba it nia fundu lori aumenta tan nee. Se karik gvernu Fretilin uluk liu hosi assistensia guvernu Norwegia,Banku mudial,IMF, Gafney Cline hosi Amerika la ajuda ita halo lei petroleu, lei Petroleum Fund ho Petrleum tax Law karik la hatene agora nee ita atu sura saida los. Hosi Londres

Se karik guvernu uluk la kria fundu petroleu hau lahatene saida los maka atu akontese ba ita nia osan nebe maka mai hosi minarai. Apalagi ho guvernu AMP nebe gasta osan taka matan hanesan nee, bele mos resulta ita sai hanesan nasaun balu iha Asia, Afrika, Europa ho Latin Amerka nebe maka 100% depende ba mina e too loron ikus mina hotu ita hotu sei tata liman e osan hosi minarai sai deit hanesan istoria pasadu ba ita nia oan ho beioan sira.

Liu hosi komantario ida mos hau hakarak atu fo hanoin liu tan ba povu tomak katak guvernu se deit maka atu ukun ihan tinan 5 ka 10 mai tan sei gosa liu guvernu AMP agora ho rasaun "guvernu AMP agora nee gosa deit hosi resultadu kampu Bayu Undan deit, maibe guvernu sira nebe maka atu ukun mai oin sei gosa ho osan nebe maka barak liu tamba sei aumenta tan rendementu hosi kampu seluk hanesan agora dadaun kampu Kitan nebe maka atu produce mina iha tinan oin mai tan, Sunrise ho kampu sira seluk nebe halao hela aktividade esplorsaun liu hosi guvernu Fritilin asina kontratu iha tinan 2006".

Resultadu hosi politika guvernu uluk maka agora nee AMP bele hamnasa ho fahe osan ba katuas ho ferik sira, parlementu sira sae kareta luxu ho aumenta sira nia salariu e mos halao korupsaun iha fatin-fatin, maibe realidade sai oin seluk sira AMP nunka fo obrigadu ou louvor ba guvernu anterior e sira mos sei kritika tan katak politika gubernu Fretilin nian kona ba Bayu Undan ne ita lakon maibe realidade sira usa hela osan hosi Bayu Undan.