Norwegian fund drops Chinese firm for selling aircrafts to Myanmar

According to the Norwegian central bank, Norway’s biggest wealth fund has excluded a company from China for selling weapons to Myanmar.

The fund states, that they have cut all ties to AviChina Industry & Technology due to the “unacceptable risk that the company is selling weapons to a state that uses these weapons in ways that represents serious violations of the rules of international humanitarian law”.

AviChina is said to have delivered airplanes to Myanmar in December 2021, despite the fact, that the country has been in turmoil since the government was deposed in an army coup around two years ago.

The decision to exclude the company was made by Norway’s central bank, based on a recommendation by an ethics board.

The fund was valued at 13.2 trillion kroner ($1.3 trillion) on Wednesday (Jan. 25) and owned 0.37 per cent of the Chinese group at the end of 2021.

The fund, in which the Norwegian state’s oil revenues are placed, is one of the biggest investors in the world with shares in more than 9,000 companies.

It is governed by rules that prohibit it from investing in companies involved in serious human rights violations, and as a result, it has previously dissociated itself from a number of companies, including Airbus, Boeing, Glencore, Lockheed Martin and Philip Morris.