FOOD FOR THOUGHT: BRUNEI CAN HELP FEED THE WORLD. BUT CAN IT FEED ITSELF?

A fertiliser plant that serves farmers across the world raises a quieter question about the farmers at home.

 

KopiTalk with MHO
By Malai Hassan Othman

Brunei can now help feed the world.

Read that again and let it settle. For a small country that spent most of its modern life selling oil, that is something worth pausing over.

Brunei Fertilizer Industries — wholly owned by the Government of Brunei Darussalam and built at Sungai Liang in the Belait District — is now one of the largest single-train fertiliser plants in Southeast Asia. Its customers stretch from Thailand and Vietnam to Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas. The plant produces 3,900 metric tonnes of granular urea every day. More than 1.3 million tonnes a year.

These are not paper targets. This is a working plant, serving real farmers in real countries, helping grow real food.

That is a point of genuine national pride. And it should be said clearly before anything else.

But pride should make us more honest, not less.

Because here is the quieter, harder question that follows: if Brunei can produce fertiliser at that scale to help farmers across the world, how much of that same strength is helping the farmers here at home?

The answer, based on official data, is more uncomfortable than we might like.

In a January 2026 briefing, officials confirmed that Brunei had reached 112 per cent self-sufficiency in eggs and 100 per cent in broiler chicken. Good progress, and it deserves acknowledgment.

But the same briefing told a different story for almost everything else on the plate. Local rice production covers only 8.5 per cent of national need. Beef and buffalo meat: 1.6 per cent. Tropical fruits: 43 per cent. Vegetables: 78 per cent. Fish and shrimp: around 63 per cent.

These are not abstract statistics. They are the gap between what Brunei grows and what Brunei eats — a gap that gets paid for every day in import bills, and felt acutely whenever global prices rise, shipping is disrupted, or a producing country faces its own crisis.

Now here is the detail that makes this picture even sharper.

Among BFI's newer products is a fertiliser specifically developed to help rice grow better. The science is straightforward: without the right nutrients in the soil, rice yields fall short — and one of the most common and correctable causes of poor rice harvests is a soil deficiency that targeted fertiliser can address directly. BFI identified this problem and developed a product to fix it.

Brunei grows 8.5 per cent of the rice it eats.

BFI has a product designed to help close exactly that kind of gap.

The question this raises is not whether BFI has done its job. The question is whether that product — and others like it — is reaching Brunei's own padi farmers, at workable prices, backed by proper soil guidance and farmer support. Or whether its main practical impact remains concentrated in larger export markets.

That question deserves a clear, public answer.

To be fair, this is not BFI's burden to carry alone. Growing more food in Brunei requires more than better fertiliser. It requires land, water, training, financing, market access and young people who see a future in farming worth pursuing. No single company solves all of that.

But BFI is not just any company.

A plant of that scale, owned by the government, sitting at the upstream end of the food chain, carries a public-interest importance that goes beyond export volumes and production records. Its value to the nation should be measured not only by what it sells abroad, but by what it enables at home.

There are signs that the domestic link is being taken more seriously. Borneo Bulletin reported in April 2026 that BFI had appointed Wasan Milling Company — which last year more than doubled Brunei's national rice milling capacity — as local distributor for domestically produced fertiliser. In May 2026, BFI and UNISSA formalised a strategic partnership through a memorandum of understanding to strengthen research and industry collaboration.

These are encouraging moves.

But encouragement is not the same as a system.

A distributor appointment does not transform agriculture. An MoU does not put more local produce on the supermarket shelf. What turns individual initiatives into genuine national progress is whether they are connected — whether there is a clear strategy linking fertiliser supply to soil testing, farmer training, crop planning, market access and measurable improvement over time. And whether anyone is tracking, honestly, whether things are actually getting better.

Are Brunei's farmers getting access to BFI's products at the right price and in the right quantities? Is fertiliser supply translating into better yields? Is the drive for rice self-sufficiency being coordinated with the very plant that produces the nutrients rice needs most?

These are not complicated questions. They are basic accountability questions. And they deserve clear answers from the agencies responsible.

Wawasan 2035 promised Brunei a diversified, sustainable economy — one that builds real capability across multiple sectors and leaves the next generation with more options than the last. Food security is part of that promise. So is making sure that strategic national assets work for the whole country, not just the export ledger.

Brunei has a consistent pattern of building impressive things, and then not quite connecting them to the next national priority. A plant gets built. A plan gets written. An MoU gets signed. And somewhere in between, the farmer in Tutong is still running the same calculations he ran five years ago, wondering whether planting another season still makes sense.

That is not necessarily a failure of vision. It is a failure to follow through.

And it is the kind of weakness that does not announce itself loudly. It builds quietly — in rising import bills, in shrinking agricultural land, in a younger generation that sees farming as a last resort rather than a serious livelihood.

Brunei does not need to grow everything itself. That is not the point. But it must decide which food categories matter most, which local sectors deserve serious long-term investment, and which national assets — BFI among them — can be deployed more deliberately to close the distance between what we produce industrially and what we can actually put on our own table.

That journey must not stop at the export jetty.

It must reach the field. The farmer. The padi grower weighing whether to plant another season.

It must reach the market.

It must reach the dinner table.

So yes — well done, BFI. Well done, Brunei.

We should be proud that this country can now help feed the world.

But pride should not stop us from asking the harder question.

Can Brunei also feed itself?

That is the real food for thought.

— Malai Hassan Othman
KopiTalk with MHO | kopitalkmho.blogspot.com

Wawasan 2035: What the Numbers Don't Say — Part Three of Four

For eighteen years, Brunei has spoken of diversification.

The plans are there. The roadmaps are there. The committees, consultations and policy language are all there.

But the flatlines remain.

Perhaps the harder question is not whether Brunei has ambition. It clearly does.

The harder question is whether the system around that ambition is strong enough, urgent enough, and accountable enough to deliver it.

Government job security. Missing scoreboards. Fragmented responsibility. Subsidies that soften pressure. Tourism constraints that few want to name too plainly.

These are not secrets.

They are the invisible walls between aspiration and delivery.

KopiTalk with MHO — Part Three: What Nobody Wants to Say

 

KopiTalk with MHO

 

 WHAT NOBODY WANTS TO SAY

The structural factors behind the flatlines — and why they have rarely been named plainly.

 

By Malai Hassan Othman | Investigative Journalist & Policy Analyst, Brunei Darussalam

 

The previous two columns examined what the numbers show. This column examines what they do not — and why.

 

The Brunei Economic Outlook 2026 is a candid report by the standards of official analysis in a small country where institutional relationships matter and political sensitivity is real. It names declining retail, structural fiscal deficits, the feedstock dependency of downstream diversification, and the flatlines across four of five priority sectors.

 

These are important findings. But there are structural factors behind those findings that official reports — for entirely understandable reasons — have approached with caution.

 

These factors are not secrets. Anyone who has worked in or studied Brunei's economy recognises them. They surface in careful language in AMRO consultation reports, in peer-reviewed academic papers, in the footnotes of development studies. They are discussed, quietly, in offices and over coffee.

 

What they rarely are is said plainly. In public. With the clarity that a policy conversation about such matters requires.

 

That is what this column will attempt.

 

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THE JOB THAT NEVER NEEDED TO BE EARNED

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For two generations, the rational career path for a capable Bruneian graduate has been the same: seek government employment. Stable income. Pension. Predictable hours. Social status. The security that no private sector employer in tourism, food, ICT, or services can credibly match.

 

This is not a criticism of those who made that choice. It is a description of rational behaviour in a system that makes it the obvious one.

 

The consequence is structural. The private sector in non-oil sectors — the sectors Wawasan 2035 depends on — competes for talent against an institution offering security that no commercial enterprise can replicate. It loses that competition more often than not.

 

The BEO 2026 notes, carefully, that the government has adopted a stance of "no longer acting as employer of first resort." That is the stated position. The social expectation, built across decades, has not shifted at the same pace.

 

In measurable terms, the number of locals employed in the private sector rose from approximately 75,000 in 2019 to more than 90,000 in 2024. That is real progress. But much of that movement came from necessity during the pandemic years, when foreign workers left and firms had no alternative. The deeper question — whether young Bruneians are choosing the private sector or being drawn into it by circumstance — remains an open one.

 

Until the career calculus changes — not through exhortation but through a private sector that can credibly compete on opportunity and reward — the four flatlined sectors will continue to struggle for the talent they need to grow.

 

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THE PLAN WITHOUT A SCOREBOARD

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Here is a structural feature of Wawasan 2035 that is rarely discussed publicly: it has no hard numerical targets per sector.

 

No percentage of GDP that ICT must reach by 2030. No tourist arrival number that constitutes success or failure. No employment benchmark for the food sector. No investment threshold for services.

 

The BEO 2026 confirms this. Wawasan 2035, it notes, "does not set out rigid numerical targets such as specifying a percentage GDP share for each sector or a fixed number of jobs per industry." The operational roadmap translates the vision into priorities and directions. Not into measurable, time-bound outcomes with clear ownership attached.

 

Without a scoreboard, there is no accountability. Without accountability, there is no urgency.

 

Without urgency, there is activity — committees, strategies, roadmaps, MOUs, consultations, launches — but not necessarily results.

 

This is not a conspiracy. It is a design feature. And it is the architecture that has allowed eighteen years to pass, four sectors to flatline, and the distance between Wawasan 2035's ambitions and their delivery to remain, as yet, without a formal owner.

 

The gap between intention and execution is real. The gap between execution and accountability has, in the absence of hard targets, remained difficult to measure.

 

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EVERYONE'S PROBLEM IS NOBODY'S PROBLEM

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Ask a straightforward question: who is accountable if Brunei's tourism sector falls short of its 2035 ambitions?

 

The Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism holds the mandate. The Brunei Economic Development Board courts investors. The Ministry of Finance and Economy controls the budget. Local authorities govern land use. Immigration determines visa policy. Halal certification falls under a separate institutional domain entirely.

 

An investor navigating this landscape does not encounter a single government. They encounter a series of offices, each with its own process, its own timeline, and its own set of approvals. Every door has a key. Finding the person who holds all the keys is a different matter.

 

The same fragmentation applies to food security, ICT, and professional services. Multiple agencies with overlapping mandates. Multiple planning cycles that do not always align. Multiple approval layers that, in a more streamlined system, could move faster.

 

The AMRO 2025 consultation report identifies constraints related to Brunei's "bureaucracy" alongside labour market and cultural factors. The BEO 2026 calls for "bankable roadmaps" with "clear links to power reliability and skills development" — a call that reflects both the distance still to be covered and the urgency of covering it before 2035.

 

When responsibility is spread across enough agencies, it is difficult to say who answers for the overall result. This is not a failure of individuals. It is a structural challenge. And structural challenges can be addressed — but only if they are named clearly enough to be acted on.

 

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THE SUBSIDY THAT COSTS MORE THAN MONEY

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Energy subsidies account for approximately 6 percent of GDP, according to the BEO 2026. That is the fiscal cost. The economic cost is less frequently examined.

 

Subsidised fuel, electricity, and other household provisions reduce the pressure that, in other economies, drives enterprise. When the cost of living is cushioned substantially by the state, the push that motivates people to build businesses, take commercial risks, and create new industries is moderated. Not removed — but moderated.

 

The evidence appears in an unexpected part of the BEO 2026. Brunei's financial institutions have grown their foreign lending portfolio from 11 percent of total loans in 2020 to 31 percent by the third quarter of 2025 — the highest level on record.

 

In plain terms: capital is finding its opportunities abroad.

 

The domestic private sector, in the non-oil sectors Wawasan 2035 depends on, is not generating the investment pipeline that a diversifying economy should be producing. Local banks are not making a poor decision. They are responding to a market that is not yet offering enough to keep that capital at home.

 

Subsidy reform is the hardest policy conversation in Brunei. Not because the economics are complicated — they are not — but because subsidies are part of the social contract. They are the tangible expression of what oil wealth has meant for ordinary Bruneians across two generations. Reforming them requires touching something more than a budget line.

 

But the BEO 2026 is clear: a credible medium-term fiscal framework requires rationalisation of energy subsidies and a broadening of the non-oil revenue base. The fiscal arithmetic demands it. The elevated oil prices from the Middle East conflict offer a rare window to begin the transition with a buffer in place.

 

That window will not remain open indefinitely.

 

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THE HONEST TOURISM RECKONING

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This is the observation that successive tourism strategies have tended to frame carefully rather than resolve directly.

 

Brunei's tourism offering — pristine rainforest, Islamic heritage, safety, quiet authenticity — appeals to a specific and relatively small segment of the global market. It does not appeal, structurally, to the majority of travellers who drive volume tourism in Southeast Asia.

 

The government's own strategy acknowledges this implicitly by adopting a high-value, low-volume regenerative model centred on eco-tourism, cultural heritage, and wellness. That is the appropriate response to real constraints. The BEO 2026 itself rates tourism's 2035 viability as "low" — the only sector to receive that assessment — noting that "strict local regulations make it difficult to compete with mass-market heavyweights like Bali, Phuket, or Sabah."

 

The structural constraints are specific. Ground transport for independent travellers remains limited. Hotel room inventory is insufficient for scale. Air connectivity has shrunk from 29 routes before the pandemic to 22 today. The high-value visitor that the regenerative model targets requires a premium product — in Temburong eco-infrastructure, wellness facilities, trained guides, and digital marketing — that has not yet been built at the pace the model requires.

 

The honest conversation is this: tourism, as currently structured, may contribute more reliably to national identity and cultural positioning than to GDP and employment at the scale Wawasan 2035 originally envisaged. Acknowledging that openly would allow policy attention and investment to concentrate where returns are demonstrably higher — in logistics, aquaculture, professional services, and ICT. That shift requires naming the constraint clearly first.

 

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WHY THIS MATTERS FOR WHAT COMES NEXT

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None of the five factors above are secrets.

 

None require insider access or classified information. They are observable, documented, and acknowledged — in careful language — across multiple official and academic sources. What they have lacked is a plain public naming. A clear statement that connects these structural realities to the outcome the data shows: eighteen years, four flatlines, nine years remaining.

 

These are not technical problems. They cannot be resolved by another strategy document, another stakeholder consultation, another roadmap placed beside the previous one.

 

They require political will. And political will, in any system, grows from honest public conversation — the kind that makes it easier to act than to wait.

 

In the final column, we ask what accountability actually looks like in practice — not in theory, but in the specific, achievable steps that the remaining nine years still make possible.

 

Nine years is not enough to do everything.

 

It is enough to do the right things.

 

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Next: Part Four — "The Reckoning We Cannot Defer"

 

Data sources: Brunei Economic Outlook 2026 (CSPS, April 2026); BDKI 2025 (DEPS); AMRO 2025 Annual Consultation Report on Brunei Darussalam; BEO 2026 Labour Force Survey data; UBD Institute of Policy Studies Policy Brief 2024; Department of Economic Planning and Statistics quarterly reports 2024–2025.

Wawasan 2035: What the Numbers Don't Say — Part Two of Four

Brunei’s diversification story looks impressive on paper.

But look closer, and a harder question emerges: are we truly building a broader economy — or has one major downstream success story made the headline numbers look stronger than the wider economy beneath them?

When four priority sectors remain largely flat while one industrial giant carries much of the growth story, the issue is no longer just about GDP.

It is about resilience.

It is about jobs.

It is about whether Wawasan 2035 is being built on many strong pillars — or leaning too heavily on one dominant pillar.

 

KopiTalk with MHO — Part Two: The One-Company Story

 

 KopiTalk with MHO

THE ONE-COMPANY STORY

When one joint venture moves the needle — and four sectors do not.

By Malai Hassan Othman | Investigative Journalist & Policy Analyst, Brunei Darussalam

 

In 2019, something shifted in Brunei's trade data that attracted little public attention at the time.

 

Crude oil — a negligible import for decades — suddenly became the country's single largest import category. By 2024, it accounted for 55 percent of everything Brunei brought in from abroad.

 

Brunei, an oil-producing nation, had become one of the region's significant crude oil importers.

 

This is not a sign of failure. It is the direct consequence of Hengyi Industries' refinery and petrochemical complex at Pulau Muara Besar — a facility with Phase 1 capacity to process up to 175,000 barrels of crude per day, well above Brunei's domestic output of less than 100,000 barrels. The plant needs more oil than the country produces. So it imports.

 

The question this column poses is not whether that arrangement is commercially rational. It is. The question is what it reveals about the nature of Brunei's much-cited economic diversification — and whether the story we have been telling ourselves holds up under examination.

 

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THE HEADLINE AND WHAT IS BEHIND IT

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Brunei's most-repeated diversification statistic is this: the non-oil and gas sector now accounts for 54 percent of GDP.

 

That number appears in the Brunei Economic Outlook 2026. It is accurate. On its own, it is also incomplete.

 

The 54 percent figure includes the downstream petrochemical sector — Hengyi, Brunei Methanol Company, Brunei Fertilizer Industries, and related activities. All of them convert hydrocarbons into other products. All run on gas or crude oil as their primary input. All remain exposed to energy and chemical markets. When oil prices fall, their margins can come under pressure. When gas supply tightens, their output can be affected.

 

Classifying these activities as "non-oil and gas" is technically correct by accounting convention. But calling their growth "diversification" in the Wawasan 2035 sense — reduced dependence on hydrocarbon cycles, new income streams uncorrelated with oil prices, and genuine resilience against commodity shocks — is a different matter entirely.

 

The BEO 2026 acknowledges this with precision. It states that Brunei's trade diversification "has occurred within the hydrocarbon value chain rather than away from it." It describes the external position as "feedstock dependent."

 

These are important qualifications. They appear deep in the report's trade analysis. They do not appear in the headline summary.

 

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THE JOINT VENTURE THAT MOVED THE NEEDLE

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Hengyi Industries is a Brunei-China joint venture. Zhejiang Hengyi Group of China holds 70 percent. Damai Holdings holds the remaining 30 percent — a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brunei government's Strategic Development Capital Fund. It is the largest single foreign direct investment in Brunei's history.

 

Let us be precise about what this joint venture has done.

 

In 2015, downstream oil and gas accounted for 26 percent of GDP. By 2023, it accounted for 59 percent. That shift is driven overwhelmingly by one company.

 

CSPS estimates Hengyi's GDP contribution at approximately 10 percent since operations began in 2019. With Phase 2 raising refining capacity from 8 million to 20 million tons per year — a US$13.6 billion expansion officially launched in January 2026 with financing that includes Brunei Islamic Bank — that contribution could reach 30 percent by 2030.

 

Thirty percent of the economy. One joint venture. Capital-intensive. Running largely on imported crude.

 

Now examine the employment picture carefully — because two figures both apply, and both are accurate.

 

Within its own operations, Hengyi employs approximately 675 Bruneians — 40 percent of its total workforce. That is a meaningful commitment within the company itself.

 

In national terms, however, the downstream oil and gas sector as a whole employs 1 percent of Brunei's total workforce.

 

One percent.

 

A sector accounting for more than half of GDP — potentially a third on Hengyi's share alone by 2030 — provides direct employment to one in every hundred Bruneian workers.

 

Tourism, which CSPS rates the most challenging of the five priority sectors, employs eight times as many. Services, which has flatlined, employs seventeen times as many.

 

GDP tells one story. The labour market tells another.

 

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DEEPENING, NOT DIVERSIFYING

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True diversification reduces a country's vulnerability to its primary commodity risk. It builds revenue streams that move independently of oil prices. It spreads employment across sectors. It limits the fiscal damage a price shock can cause.

 

Hengyi, despite its scale, does not deliver these outcomes.

 

It captures more value per barrel — turning crude and gas into petrochemicals, methanol, and fertilizers rather than exporting them raw. That is commercially impressive and economically rational.

 

But it does not reduce exposure to the barrel. It deepens it.

 

Consider what Phase 2 means in aggregate. Refining capacity rising from 8 to 20 million tons per year. Crude imports rising accordingly. Industrial power demand at Pulau Muara Besar roughly doubling.

 

By 2030, adding upstream oil and gas to a potential 30 percent Hengyi contribution, total hydrocarbon-linked activity could account for 70 to 75 percent of GDP — while official statistics, by standard accounting convention, will continue to show Brunei as a majority non-oil economy.

 

The BEO 2026 is clear-eyed about this. External resilience, it states, depends "increasingly on keeping downstream plants supplied, powered, and connected to markets." Feedstock security, port efficiency, and maintenance discipline are described not merely as industrial concerns, but as trade policy issues.

 

Academic researchers have drawn the same conclusion independently. A 2023 peer-reviewed study published in the Asian Journal of Social Science — authored by Guanie Lim, Chang-Yau Hoon, and Kaili Zhao, examining Brunei-China economic relations — states that the Hengyi investment "seemingly entrenches Brunei in its longstanding hydrocarbon-centric development trajectory" and "ironically creates even greater dependence on hydrocarbon."

 

The same study observes that Brunei's participation in the venture has been largely as regulators, investors, and employees — rather than as holders of the technology and process knowledge that drive production itself.

 

This is a more sophisticated version of oil dependency.

 

It is not an exit from it.

 

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A NOTE ON OWNERSHIP AND INDEPENDENCE

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Hengyi Industries' joint venture structure is publicly known and has always been transparent.

 

Zhejiang Hengyi Group holds 70 percent. The Brunei government holds 30 percent through Damai Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of its Strategic Development Capital Fund.

 

The national development fund benefits directly when Hengyi performs well. This is by design. Alignment of commercial and national interest is precisely the purpose of a sovereign development fund.

 

What this ownership structure underscores, in a broader sense, is the value of independent analytical voices in a small, concentrated economy.

 

When a single company's performance accounts for much of what is reported as structural economic progress, the role of institutions like CSPS — and of public discourse more broadly — becomes correspondingly more important.

 

Numbers that carry multiple meanings in a concentrated economy are worth examining from multiple angles.

 

That is what this series intends to do.

 

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THE SUBSTITUTION EFFECT

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Between 2015 and 2025, while Hengyi generated impressive GDP figures, the four sectors that were intended to build new income streams — ICT, food, tourism, and services — held their collective position at 2 to 6 percent of GDP each, year after year, without meaningful movement.

 

The Hengyi story provided what might be called narrative relief.

 

When the diversification question arose, the answer could point to a massive complex on Pulau Muara Besar, to a 59 percent downstream share, to 54 percent non-oil GDP. The question, having been answered with data, often went no further. The urgency to push harder on the other four sectors eased — not by deliberate decision, but by the quiet logic of a story that seemed, on the surface, to be proceeding well.

 

The BEO 2026 states what the data shows: the four non-downstream sectors "have yet to significantly impact on the structure of the economy."

 

After eighteen years. After successive national development plans.

 

If Hengyi had never arrived — if Brunei had faced the decade from 2015 to 2025 without that downstream anchor and its reassuring headlines — would the pressure to build genuinely diversified sectors have been greater?

 

Would the absence of a headline figure have forced a harder, earlier reckoning with what ICT, food, tourism, and services actually needed?

 

We cannot know.

 

But the question is worth sitting with.

 

The masking effect, if that is what it has become, was not designed. It arose from individually rational decisions compounding: attract a large anchor investment, support downstream, count the GDP contribution as diversification progress, and report accordingly.

 

No single decision was necessarily wrong.

 

The cumulative effect, however, has been a set of statistics that can be read — without misrepresentation — as evidence of structural progress, while four of five priority sectors have barely moved.

 

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WHAT THE NEXT COLUMN ASKS

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Wawasan 2035 was always a five-sector story.

 

It has become, in practice, a one-company story.

 

In the next column, we go further in. Not investment policy or sector strategy, but the deeper reasons why genuine diversification has been so difficult to build — the institutional design, the cultural expectations, and the quiet consequences of a social contract built on oil wealth that has, over two generations, reshaped how Brunei thinks about risk, work, and enterprise.

 

These are the conversations that institutional reports approach with measured care.

 

KopiTalk will approach them plainly.

 

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Next: Part Three — "What Nobody Wants to Say"

 

Data sources: Brunei Economic Outlook 2026 (CSPS, April 2026); NS Energy Business, Hengyi PMB Project Profile; Wikipedia, Hengyi Industries (February 2026 edition); Biz Brunei, Hengyi Industries 2020 Revenue Report; Lim, G., Hoon, C-Y., & Zhao, K. (2023). Foreign Investment, State Capitalism, and National Development in Borneo: Rethinking Brunei–China Economic Relations. Asian Journal of Social Science, SAGE Publications. DOI: 10.1177/18681034231186441; BEO 2026 Trade Analysis; DEPS quarterly reports.

Wawasan 2035: What the Numbers Don't Say — Part One of Four

KopiTalk with MHO 

THE CLOCK IS RUNNING
Eighteen years. Five promises. Four flatlines.

By Malai Hassan Othman | Investigative Journalist & Policy Analyst, Brunei Darussalam

Walk through any commercial area in Brunei today.

Count the empty shopfronts. Note the "For Rent" signs. The food courts that are quieter than they used to be. The malls where some units have been dark for months, then longer.

Then ask the question this series intends to pursue: after eighteen years of Wawasan 2035, why is this still part of what economic diversification looks like on the ground?

In an earlier column, I examined Brunei's economic vital signs through the BDKI 2025 — a full national health check. The diagnosis was uncomfortable. Retail sales falling for the third consecutive year. Services contracting. A fiscal deficit widening year on year. A private sector that shrank 2.1 percent.

This four-part series goes one level deeper. Not just the condition of the body today, but whether the treatment plan we have followed for nearly two decades is actually delivering the structural change Wawasan 2035 requires.

The evidence comes from the Brunei Economic Outlook 2026, published last month by the Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies. It is among the most candid publicly available assessments of Brunei's macroeconomic position. I have read it the way I read the BDKI — not for the reassuring parts, but for the real ones.

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NINE YEARS
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Wawasan 2035 was drafted in 2007. We are in 2026. Nine years remain on a twenty-eight year national promise: a dynamic and sustainable economy, a quality of life ranking among the top ten nations in the world, and an accomplished and skilled people.

Nine years sounds like time. In implementation terms, it is not.

Any reform, restructuring, or market development that has not meaningfully begun by 2027 will struggle to reach scale by 2035. The window for structural change is effectively two to three years. After that, we are in harvest season.

You can only harvest what has already been planted.

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FIVE PROMISES. ONE DELIVERING.
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Wawasan 2035 identified five priority sectors as the pillars of Brunei's diversified future: downstream oil and gas, ICT, food, tourism, and services.

The CSPS report tracks their share of GDP and employment from 2015 to 2023, using Department of Economic Planning and Statistics data. The picture is stark.

One sector has delivered. Downstream oil and gas, led by Hengyi Petrochemical at Pulau Muara Besar, grew its GDP share from 26 percent in 2015 to 59 percent in 2023. That is an undeniable structural achievement.

The other four:

ICT — 3 to 4 percent of GDP. Largely unchanged since 2015.
Food — approximately 2 percent. Largely unchanged.
Tourism — 4 to 6 percent. Structurally unchanged.
Services — around 35 percent. Stable, but not significantly expanding.

In employment terms, the picture is equally unmoved. ICT employs 1 percent of the workforce. Food 2 percent. Tourism 8 percent. Services 17 percent. The same broad proportions as six years ago.

CSPS states it directly: the four sectors outside downstream oil "have not significantly increased their contribution to GDP" and "have yet to significantly impact on the structure of the economy."

Eighteen years. Four flatlines.

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WHAT THE STREET ALREADY KNOWS
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Brunei's retail sector has now declined for three consecutive years.

For the full year 2024, retail revenue fell from BND 1,740.9 million to BND 1,679.7 million — a 3.5 percent contraction, according to DEPS. In Q2 2024 alone, the drop was 6.1 percent year-on-year. Furniture and household equipment sales fell 19 percent. Electrical appliances dropped 9.3 percent. Supermarkets declined 6.9 percent. Department stores fell 6 percent.

Food and beverage fared no better. In Q3 2024, fast-food outlets contracted 11.2 percent. Beverage-serving activities fell 8.3 percent. Other food services dropped 6.4 percent. The BEO 2026 further notes that restaurant activity contracted in every quarter of 2025.

Not one bad quarter. Every quarter.

The explanation is not that Bruneians have stopped spending. They have not. More than BND 1 billion leaves Brunei every year through cross-border spending, according to a 2024 UBD Institute of Policy Studies policy brief. Before the pandemic, Bruneians made 2.4 million border crossings annually — more than five trips per person per year. Shopping. Entertainment. Leisure. All ahead of what the domestic economy was able to keep at home.

The money is moving. Too much of it is no longer moving through the domestic economy.

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THE QUESTION BEHIND THE NUMBERS
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The gap between what the government spends and what it earns reached an estimated 13 to 15 percent of GDP in 2025. Oil and gas revenues account for approximately 85 percent of total government income. Breaking even requires Brent crude to average around USD 75.60 per barrel. For much of 2025, it did not.

This is the national position entering the final decade of Wawasan 2035.

Approximately eighty-five percent of revenue still from oil and gas. Four of five priority sectors largely unmoved after years of tracking. Retail and services under pressure for three consecutive years. More than a billion dollars a year flowing across the border. Nine years on the clock.

The question this series will pursue — across four instalments, with evidence — is not whether Brunei has been working hard. It has been.

The question is whether we have been working on the right things, with the right accountability, and with sufficient candour about what the numbers are actually telling us.

In the next column, we examine why one sector's remarkable success may have functioned as a smokescreen — obscuring, rather than advancing, the broader diversification that Wawasan 2035 always required.

The clock is running. The scorecard is now open.

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Next: Part Two — "The One-Company Story"

Data sources: Brunei Economic Outlook 2026 (CSPS); BDKI 2025 (DEPS); UBD Institute of Policy Studies Policy Brief 2024; Borneo Bulletin / Department of Economic Planning and Statistics retail and F&B quarterly reports 2024–2025. 

After Subuh, Al-Fatihah Felt Different

After Subuh, in the quiet before the world begins its noise, an old ayat returned with a new weight.

Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘Alamin.

A phrase we say so often, yet perhaps do not always hear.

This is not a lesson about knowing more.
It is a reflection on forgetting too much.

On blessings we treat as ordinary.
On complaints that rise faster than gratitude.
On amal that may look good outside, while the heart still needs teaching inside.

Sometimes, the deepest reminder is not something new.

Sometimes, it is an old ayat touching an old weakness — and asking the heart to see again.

By Malai Hassan Othman  

After Subuh, when the morning was still quiet and the world had not yet gathered its noise, I sat in a small taddabur class listening to a reflection on Surah Al-Fatihah.

It was a familiar surah.

Too familiar, perhaps.

That was the first thing that touched me.

Sometimes, the words we recite most often are the words we may have stopped hearing deeply.

Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘Alamin.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.

I have read this ayat countless times. I have said Alhamdulillah after meals, after finishing work, after receiving good news, after being asked how I am. Like many others, I say it almost automatically.

But that morning, I felt quietly exposed.

Not by anyone in the class. Not by the teacher. Not by a harsh reminder.

But by the ayat itself.

Because I began to ask myself: how many times have I said Alhamdulillah with my tongue, while my heart was still busy complaining?

How many times have I thanked Allah for one blessing, while quietly feeling dissatisfied over another thing I had not received?

How many times have I looked at my own effort, my own tiredness, my own planning, my own struggle — and forgotten that even the strength to work was never mine to begin with?

That morning’s reflection was not only about the meaning of an ayat. It was about the nature of the human heart.

And perhaps that is why it stayed with me.

Human beings are strange. We remember pain quickly, but forget mercy easily. We count our difficulties with detail, but often treat our blessings as normal. We complain when something is delayed, but rarely pause long enough to recognise how much has already arrived without us asking.

A body that still carries us through another morning.

A family that remains. A little peace that holds, even when much else does not.

These things are not small. They only become small when the heart has become too used to receiving.

That, perhaps, is my weakness.

I do not always see.

I do not always pause.

I do not always return the praise to where it belongs.

I may say Alhamdulillah, but sometimes my mind is already moving to the next worry, the next frustration, the next thing I feel is still missing.

And that is where Surah Al-Fatihah gently corrects the heart.

It does not begin by asking.

It begins by praising.

Before we ask Allah to guide us to the straight path, we are first taught to say Alhamdulillah.

Before we speak of what we need, we are reminded of who Allah is.

Before we think of our own journey, we are brought back to the One who owns and sustains all journeys.

Rabbil ‘Alamin.

Lord of all the worlds.

This part of the ayat widened the reflection for me.

Allah is not only the One who gives us what we notice. He is also the One who gives us what we do not notice.

He gives before we ask.

He protects before we realise we were in danger.

He withholds what we may not be ready to receive.

He opens doors we did not know existed.

He closes doors we may one day thank Him for closing.

Yet, so often, the human heart wants to understand everything immediately. We want our plans to move according to our own timing. We want our efforts to produce visible results. We want our prayers to be answered in the form we imagined.

When that does not happen, we become restless.

I know that feeling.

I know how easily the heart can become impatient. I know how quickly gratitude can become thin when life does not go the way we planned. I know how often a person can still be surrounded by blessings, yet feel deprived because one particular wish has not been fulfilled.

That is why Alhamdulillah is not only a word of gratitude.

It is a discipline.

It trains the heart to look again.

It tells the restless heart: do not only look at what is missing. Look also at what has remained.

It tells the proud heart: do not claim too much. Even your effort was carried by Allah’s permission.

It tells the tired heart: do not despair. The One who sustained you yesterday has not abandoned you today.

It tells the forgetful heart: return.

Return the praise.

Return the credit.

Return the heart.

The discussion after Subuh also made me think about amal.

We often think of amal as something outward — prayer, charity, work, service, kindness, helping others, fulfilling duties, doing good.

But perhaps amal also depends on what is happening quietly inside the heart.

A person may work hard, but the heart may be full of self-importance.

A person may help others, but the heart may secretly want to be noticed.

A person may speak of good things, but the heart may enjoy being seen as wise.

A person may worship, but the heart may still be distracted, proud, careless or forgetful.

That thought made me uncomfortable.

Because it is easier to look at what we do than to look at why we do it.

It is easier to count our actions than to examine our intentions.

It is easier to appear good before people than to be honest before Allah.

And maybe that is why Al-Fatihah begins with Alhamdulillah.

It brings the self down before the amal rises.

It reminds us that no act of goodness should make us feel superior. If we are able to pray, that too is a gift. If we are able to give, that too is a gift. If we are able to learn, serve, forgive, endure, work and remember Allah, that too is a gift.

Even the ability to say Alhamdulillah is itself a mercy from Allah.

When seen this way, amal becomes softer.

It becomes less about proving ourselves and more about returning to Allah.

Work is no longer merely work when it begins with Bismillah and ends with Alhamdulillah.

A duty is no longer merely a burden when it is carried with sincerity.

A hardship is no longer only a hardship when it teaches humility.

A blessing is no longer ordinary when it makes the heart remember the Giver.

Perhaps this is where many of us struggle.

We do not deny Allah.

We believe.

We pray.

We recite.

We say the right words.

But in daily life, the heart can still become forgetful. It can still become anxious, proud, dissatisfied, easily hurt, easily angered, easily drawn into complaint.

We may recite Al-Fatihah in prayer, but outside prayer we sometimes return to the same old habits of the heart.

That is not a judgment on others.

It is a confession about the self.

I have often treated blessings as routine, and delays as personal disappointments. I have remembered my own effort far more readily than I have remembered Allah’s mercy. I have said Alhamdulillah without allowing the word to slow me down, soften me, or correct me.

But perhaps this is also the mercy of Surah Al-Fatihah.

It keeps coming back.

In every prayer, it returns.

Again and again, it places Alhamdulillah on our tongue, hoping perhaps that one day it will reach deeper into the heart.

Again and again, it reminds us that Allah is Rabbil ‘Alamin — not only Lord of the large and unseen worlds, but also Lord of our small and private worlds: our worries, our homes, our tiredness, our hopes, our hidden fears, our unfinished struggles.

That morning after Subuh, I did not walk away feeling that I had understood everything.

I walked away feeling the opposite.

I realised how much I had recited without truly listening.

How much I had received without truly noticing.

How much I had done without fully purifying the heart behind the action.

And maybe that is a good beginning.

Not to feel better than others.

Not to preach.

Not to sound as if one has mastered the lesson.

But to admit, quietly, that the heart still needs to be taught.

The heart still needs to learn how to see.

To see mercy in ordinary things.

To see Allah’s kindness in what remains.

To see one’s own weakness without despair.

To see amal not as a badge of goodness, but as a trust that must be carried with humility.

Maybe today, Alhamdulillah can mean more than “thank God” after something good happens.

Maybe it can become a pause.

A small return.

A quiet correction.

A way of saying: Ya Allah, I have received more than I have noticed. Teach this heart to see again.

Because sometimes, the greatest lesson after Subuh is not something new.

It is an old ayat finally touching an old weakness.

Alhamdulillah Rabbil ‘Alamin.

And perhaps, for now, that is enough — to return to the same ayat, with a little more honesty than before.