Brunei Darussalam

As the Sultanate forges ahead with plans to improve air and road transport links with its neighbours as part of plans for regional growth, officials say the Sultanate’s domestic network is in equal need of attention.

Despite declining profits in 2011, Brunei Darussalam’s banks are looking forward to a period of financial stability and new products, as tighter lending rules put in place by the government have created a clean slate for new, better-regulated credit activity.

Brunei Darussalam has long identified Islamic finance as a sector that can be developed to its advantage, both to serve the banking needs of its domestic economy and as an avenue for economic development at the international level. To achieve these objectives, however, it will need to step up investments in human resources.

Thanks to the government’s incentives to take up the latest technology, along with a greater willingness among the private sector to take advantage of information and communications technology (ICT) in business, Brunei Darussalam’s ICT sector is witnessing some growth.

The Sultanate’s policy to promote industry as a means of diversifying the economy is starting to produce the dividends the government had in mind when it established the programme on industrialisation, though it still has some way to go before achieving all its objectives.

Efforts to boost the role of the private sector in Brunei Darussalam are set to be stepped up with the government’s new budget, rolled out on April 1, that includes tax reductions and incentives aimed at supporting business development.