Situated along crucial sea shipping routes on the southern edge of the South China Sea, Brunei Darussalam is well placed to take advantage of growing trade within the region. Under the 10th National Development Plan, running from 2012 to 2017, the government has allocated 19.7% of the budget to communications and transportation projects. Major investments in infrastructure are designed to have...
The ICT sector has been singled out as a priority in Brunei Darussalam’s long-term strategic development plan, Wawasan Brunei 2035, which has set an ambitious target for the sector to contribute 5-6% to national GDP by 2015, compared to an estimated 2% in 2013. Although dial-up internet connections continue to dwindle, broadband connections witnessed a dramatic resurgence starting in 2013....
Islamic banking and insurance, or takaful, are becoming the dominant forms of banking and insurance, and inbound foreign investments are increasingly channelled into Islamic markets. The Sultanate’s largest bank is an Islamic lender, dominating the domestic market as well as developing into an international player in Islamic finance. The rise of takaful has been aided by strong support from...
Local conventional and Islamic banks as well as international bank groups are all active in the small and competitive Bruneian market. Sector growth has accelerated as authorities have eased up somewhat on restrictive regulations, and banks are looking forward to an improved climate as overall economic growth revives. While the climate for banking remains competitive and the scale of the...
Plans to complement domestic production by undertaking international exploration support the Sultanate’s target of reaching an output of 650,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2035. Downstream, the government is investing in development of its petrochemicals sectors. The country today is primarily an exporter of liquefied natural gas, which is shipped to Japan, South Korea and Malaysia,...
With a wealth of oil and natural gas reserves beneath its territory, Brunei Darussalam has been able to maintain a comfortable trade surplus and ranks among the top-five countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita in spite of producing little else domestically. According to the World Bank, introduction of the ASEAN Economic Community could boost annual income growth by 0.5-1% of GDP and...
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