Total mainland activity increased by 1 percent between 2014 and 2015. This is the lowest pace of economic growth since 2009. Growth may edge down even further this year before gradually picking up again. Growth is being restrained by the marked fall in petroleum investment and weak growth in other business investment, while it is being supported by household consumption, exports of traditional goods and public demand. The depreciation of the krone is also supporting inflation. The rise in prices for imported goods has increased over the past year, and the year-on-year rise in the consumer price index has been just over 3 percent in recent months. Inflation may be dampened ahead by the decline in wage growth and as the effects of the krone depreciation unwind. Chart: Key policy rate The key policy rate was lowered to 0.5 percent at the March monetary policy meeting. According to the Executive Board’s assessment of the outlook in March, the key policy rate may be reduced further in the course of the year. The key policy rate was kept unchanged at the monetary policy meeting in May. There is no crisis in the Norwegian economy, but we are facing restructuring. Restructuring must start in the business sector. Activity in the oil sector will be reduced to a considerably lower level. Other industries must emerge and provide the basis for new jobs. Economic policy can only facilitate this process. Restructuring takes time. Monetary policy is the first line of defence in managing the economy.
These two forms of action are equivalent insofar as their main effects are concerned, because in SIPs (which are agreements containing clauses to ensure stability) the capacity to define key strategies and policies is transferred to a central entity and the participating credit institutions largely share their net assets and their liquidity, as well as pooling a high proportion of their profits. 4  BIS Review 92/2010  The FROB has a second mandate: to participate in the restructuring of unviable credit institutions, acting in this case secondarily to the traditional deposit guarantee funds (DGFs). This dual nature of the FROB and the consequent possibility that a distressed institution not involved in a merger or SIP process may undergo a crisis requiring the Fund to intervene (replacing directors and selling the credit institution or transferring its business to a third party) are an implicit incentive for financial institutions to seek partners with which to conclude merger or SIP agreements. The FROB has € billion in capital and € billion of funds from a debt issue and, if needed, it could raise up to € billion of funds from third parties. Since the FROB was set up, a period of 12 months has practically elapsed. The end of this period is marked by the deadline of 30 June 2010 set by the European Commission notification of 28 January 2010 on how to apply the general framework envisaged in it.