Regulating Natural Resource Funds

Natural resource funds are created to advance their home state interests. However, because they are more active as sovereign wealth funds invested within host states, overwhelming attention has been on their regulation to safeguard transnational interests. Meanwhile, they are only effective when they achieve their policy objectives within home states as against host states. The study asks how polities should regulate natural resource funds to be effective. Using qualitative methods in law and policy — comparative case study, literature review, and narration and description — to analyse primary and secondary legal data along with secondary empirical data, it claims that polities should regulate natural resource funds to be effective by adopting strong regulatory options and minimum regulatory essentials. It develops these options and essentials based on four regulatory features: legal framework and objectives, ownership regime, structure and functionality, and governance and operation. It makes a recommendation, and concludes thereafter