Øystein Olsen: Launch of the new 50-krone and 500-krone banknotes Speech by Mr Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at RS Noatun, Horten, 18 October 2018. * * * More information on the banknotes are available on Norges Bank's website. Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be here in Horten and Noatun to mark this important occasion for Norges Bank. On 30 May 2017, we went to Lofoten to launch the new 100-krone and 200-krone banknotes – the first two denominations in Norway’s new banknote series. Today, we are in Horten to celebrate the launch of the new 50-krone and 500-krone banknotes. So why did we choose Horten? This is an easy question to answer. The primary motif of the new 500-krone banknote is a rescue lifeboat. Since its foundation in 1891, the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue has saved more than 6 000 lives at sea. Through their tremendous efforts, largely based on volunteer work, the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue has contributed to making Norway’s coastline safer and more prosperous. Many of the lifeboat crews are trained where we are today, here at RS Noatun. These crews are on stand-by around the clock to assist people and vessels along the entire Norwegian coast. The boat you can see on the front of the 500-krone banknote is the lifeboat RS 14 Stavanger, launched in 1901.
According to the survey of damages from the earthquake and tsunami delivered by the government on March 23, the cost to replace the destroyed capital stock amounts to 20.94 billion US dollars. Following the reasoning described above, this figure is the equivalent to the gross value of the lost capital stock. How then can we estimate the net value of the capital destroyed? Estimates in our national accounts indicate that between the years 2000 and 2008 the net value of the capital stock was around 63 percent of the gross stock. Applying this percentage directly, we estimate that the damage to the net capital stock, consistent with the figure disclosed by the government, is 13.2 billion US dollars. If we consider that the net capital stock amounted in 2009 to an estimated 435 billion US dollars, the aforementioned loss is equivalent to nearly 3 percent of the total. Therefore, given a loss of 3 percent in the net capital stock, the Board estimates that during this year the level of trend GDP will fall 1.0% to 1.5% because of the catastrophe. The magnitude of the short-term impact of the natural disaster depends on the share in national GDP of the hardest hit regions, the sectoral composition of production by region and the duration of downtime in productive processes, among other factors. In 2008, Regions VI, VII and VIII produced nearly 16% of national GDP, mostly concentrated in the manufacturing sector. As for the labour market, the three regions generate almost one fifth of national employment.