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.

─────────────────────────────
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.

 

BND 500 Is Already There. The Problem Is Who It Has Not Reached.

Everyone is talking about raising the old age pension to BND 500.

But what if the bigger story is that BND 500 already exists — only it does not reach everyone?

Behind the viral anger lies a quieter and more uncomfortable question: what happens to the petty trader, the home-based seamstress, the odd-job worker, and the informal caregiver who worked all their lives but were never inside the formal retirement system?

This is not just about pension.

It is about the Bruneians who answered the call to be self-reliant — and reached old age only to discover that the safety net was built around a different kind of worker.

 

 

 

By Malai Hassan Othman | KopiTalk with MHO

You have probably seen it by now.

 

A post making the rounds — passionate, widely shared, and full of comments from people who feel the same way. The message is simple: the old age pension of BND 250 a month is not enough. Raise it to BND 500. The elderly deserve better.

 

The heart behind it is genuine. The frustration is understandable. And if you read it quickly, it sounds like a reasonable demand from people who care about their parents and grandparents.

 

But here is the thing.

 

BND 500 is already there.

 

It is just that not everyone is getting it — and the viral post, for all its good intentions, may not be asking the more important question: why not?

 

Let me explain.

 

When the government launched SPK — the Skim Persaraan Kebangsaan, or National Retirement Scheme — on 15 July 2023, it introduced a retirement structure with a basic floor in mind. A Bruneian citizen who is formally covered under the scheme and reaches the age of 60 may receive two components: the universal Old Age Pension of BND 250 a month, which has existed since 1955, and an SPK annuity from the member's Retirement Account. Where the Retirement Account balance is insufficient to provide the minimum SPK annuity, the system provides for a government-supported top-up mechanism.

 

Put together, the intended floor is BND 500 a month — a point reported by the Borneo Bulletin in February 2024 when it stated that SPK members are guaranteed “a minimum retirement income of BND500, including the BND250 monthly old pension wage.”

 

This was not accidental. The adequacy of the old pension system had already been raised at the 17th Legislative Council session in 2021. TAP listened. SPK became the structural response. The BND 500 floor was the answer built into the new system.

 

So the person sharing that viral post is asking for something that, for SPK members, already exists. They simply may not know.

 

And I say this not to embarrass anyone. I say it because it matters — because when we advocate loudly for the wrong solution, we risk drowning out the people who are still waiting for the right one.

 

Because here is what the viral post completely missed.

 

The BND 500 floor only works if you are within the SPK system. And SPK membership depends, in most practical cases, on a person having had formal employment — an employer who registered the worker, contributed on their behalf, and helped build up the Retirement Account over the years.

 

For many working Bruneians, this happens automatically. They go to work, their employer handles the contributions, and by the time they reach 60, there is at least something in that account.

 

But not everyone worked that way.

 

Brunei has — and has always had — many people who built their lives outside formal employment. The petty trader who ran a small stall for thirty years. The woman who took in sewing from home while raising her children. The man who did odd jobs, small contracts, seasonal work — never on a permanent payroll, never formally registered. The informal caregiver who looked after elderly relatives for years without a contract or a salary slip to show for it.

 

For these people, there may be no SPK Retirement Account. The government subsidy that tops up the account to ensure the minimum SPK annuity cannot operate in the same way if the account does not exist in the first place.

 

They reach 60 and receive one thing: the universal Old Age Pension.

 

BND 250 a month. That is all.

 

The same BND 250 that the viral post, quite rightly, calls inadequate.

 

So the real injustice is not simply that the pension is too low. The deeper injustice is that two Bruneians can reach the age of 60 after working their entire lives — and end up with very different retirements, not necessarily because of how hard they worked, but because of whether they were part of the formal employment system.

 

And when the state’s safety net does not fully reach a retiree, someone else fills the gap.

 

In Brunei, that someone is almost always a child. A son or daughter in their thirties or forties, already carrying their own household, their own children, their own bills — now quietly adding their parents’ shortfall to the monthly calculation. This is the sandwich generation that this column has written about before. Not an abstract sociological label, but a real family sitting at a real kitchen table, working out how to make the numbers add up.

 

The cost of this structural gap is not only carried by the system.

 

It is carried by families.

 

There is something else worth saying here, because it goes to the heart of a contradiction Brunei has been carrying for years.

 

For as long as most of us can remember, Brunei has been telling its people to become entrepreneurs. Go into business. Be self-reliant. Do not wait for a government job. Trade, build, create. The message has come from every direction — policy speeches, training programmes, grant schemes, MSME initiatives launched with great fanfare and good intentions. Entrepreneurship has often been presented as one of the answers to economic diversification.

 

And yet.

 

A study on whether Brunei’s economy is genuinely inclusive — whether the people encouraged to work outside formal employment actually have a real place in the economic chain — was launched just this month. It took a joint initiative involving UNESCAP, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, to help bring that conversation into sharper focus.

 

One might reasonably ask: should this not have been a conversation Brunei was already leading from the inside, years ago?

 

The answer is uncomfortable.

 

Because some of the same people Brunei has spent decades encouraging to become entrepreneurs — to trade informally, to build livelihoods outside the formal payroll system, to survive through self-employment — are also the very people whose old age protection may not have been fully secured by a retirement system still largely built around formal employment records.

 

You cannot spend a generation encouraging Bruneians to be self-employed and then leave old age security to depend mainly on formal employment history.

 

That is more than a policy gap. It is a policy contradiction that deserves honest attention.

 

The petty trader answered Brunei’s call. She went into business. She did not wait for a government job. She contributed to the economy for thirty years in ways that may never have appeared in a payroll register. And she arrives at 60 to find that the retirement floor everyone is arguing about on social media may not have been built with her in mind.

 

That is not her failure.

 

That is a national delivery question.

 

 

So what is the right conversation to be having?

 

Not simply “raise the pension to BND 500” — because for SPK members, that work has already been addressed. The right conversation is: how many Bruneians aged 60 and above are currently receiving only BND 250 because they were never enrolled in TAP, SCP or SPK? What is being done — actively, not just on paper — to reach the informally employed before they arrive at retirement age with nothing in their account? And is the LegCo prepared to ask the harder question: not whether the number is right, but whether the system is reaching the people it was meant to protect?

 

SPK does allow self-employed persons to register voluntarily. The door is open. But a door that many people never knew existed is not fully open in any practical sense. Voluntary registration without active outreach, without simplified processes, and without realistic contribution options for those with irregular incomes, risks becoming a policy that looks good on paper but disappears in practice.

 

Good intentions without accurate information push pressure in the wrong direction.

 

The person who wrote that viral post means well. The people who shared it mean well. The anger they are channelling is real, and it comes from the right place.

 

But Brunei does not need louder advocacy for something that already exists for those inside the system. It needs clearer advocacy for the people still outside it.

 

People who were told to be entrepreneurs.

 

People who listened.

 

People who are now reaching 60 and discovering what that advice was actually worth.

 

The question is not whether it is BND 500 or not.

 

The question is BND 500 for whom — and what are we genuinely prepared to do for those still standing on the wrong side of that door.

  

KopiTalk with MHO | kopitalkmho.blogspot.com

#Brunei #SPK #RetirementSecurity #OldAgePension #SandwichGeneration #KopiTalkWithMHO #BruneiPolicy #WawasanBrunei2035 #Entrepreneurship #InclusiveEconomy

ECONOMIC OXYGEN

   KopiTalk with MHO

 

 

ECONOMIC OXYGEN

Brunei's Late Payment Crisis and the Policy Fix Already Written

Malai Hassan Othman  |  May 2026

 A construction company owner with more than 30 years in Brunei's industry recently told Borneo Bulletin that he was considering early retirement — not because work had dried up, but because payment for completed government work had still not reached him.

Documents, he said, had been uploaded into the system. Follow-ups had been made. The invoices were there. The money was not.

That sentence should not sit comfortably in a country with a BND6.3 billion national budget.

Yet it does exist. And it has not appeared in isolation. For the better part of two years, Borneo Bulletin's Opinion pages have carried public concern over delayed payments following the launch of the Treasury Accounting and Financial Information System, TAFIS 2.0, on a new SAP platform at the start of Financial Year 2024/2025.

The Ministry of Finance and Economy acknowledged payment issues within weeks, issued a public apology in June 2024, and set up a Payment Clinic at its building. By December 2024, some contractors were publicly reporting payments overdue for long periods. By November 2025, the construction veteran's letter had appeared. By April 2026 — the start of Financial Year 2026/2027 — TAFIS 2.0 had entered its third year of operation, while public concern over payment delays had not fully disappeared.

The government invested in a sophisticated payment system. The harder question is whether the payment culture around it has kept pace.

That distinction matters. The system itself should not be treated as the whole story. Teething problems with large financial platforms are not unusual, and the Treasury Department's acknowledgement of the problem was, at least, candid. The real issue is what followed: public apologies, a Payment Clinic, repeated letters from affected businesses, and lingering concern over whether payment discipline has been restored in a way that gives confidence to the private sector.

The system may have improved. The payment culture remains under question.

Smaller contractors — those without deep reserves to absorb months of delayed receivables — are often the first to feel the pressure. As one contractor described it, authorities continued to expect work to be completed while payment remained outstanding. Bank loans still needed servicing. Workers still needed wages. Materials still had to be paid for. Some firms, according to public accounts, struggled to meet these obligations. Others survived only by drawing down on whatever savings remained.

Payment speed is not an administrative courtesy. It is economic infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Singapore provides a comparison that is difficult to ignore. Singapore's Ministry of Finance has confirmed in parliamentary debate that 98 per cent of invoices below S$5,000 billed to government agencies were paid ahead of their credit terms — and that over 99 per cent of all government invoices already run on 30-day or shorter credit terms as standard. The comparison surfaced in a local online discussion, where it attracted strong public engagement. The underlying question was fair: if prompt payment is achievable elsewhere, why should it remain difficult here?

The 22nd Session of the Legislative Council, which sat through 11 days of deliberation in March 2026, debated a BND150 million IT Central Procurement allocation and raised concerns about whether institutional capacity was keeping pace with hardware investment. It examined BND369 million in outstanding electricity arrears owed to the government. It asked questions about contractor supervision and project delivery quality.

What did not appear to receive comparable prominence was the plight of contractors who had completed government work, submitted their invoices, and were still waiting to be paid.

The people suffering most were not in the room.

Into this landscape comes a forthcoming policy paper that names the issue with uncommon precision. Ir Dato Paduka Malai Ali Malai Hj Othman — a former Permanent Secretary across the Ministry of Development, the Ministry of Transport and Communication, and the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources, as well as former Director of the Civil Service Institute — has prepared a policy paper titled Public Procurement: Buy What Government Needs, Build What the Nation Needs Next.

 It is not yet published, but its argument already feels overdue.

“Financial compliance protects public money. Ease of Economic Participation multiplies public money. A modern procurement system must achieve both.”

— Ir Dato Paduka Malai Ali Malai Hj Othman

The paper introduces a concept called Ease of Economic Participation, or EEP — the idea that a healthy economy should not be measured only by whether firms can register and enter markets, but by whether they can survive, grow, and build genuine ownership within them.

Among the mandatory principles proposed for every Ministry, Department and Agency is one sentence that deserves to be read slowly:

Prompt payment is economic oxygen for SMEs.

The phrasing is exact. Oxygen is not a reward. It is not a gesture of goodwill. It is the minimum condition for survival. When payment is delayed for work already completed and accepted, the issue is not merely an administrative inconvenience. It becomes a constraint on cash flow, wages, loans, materials, trust, and the ability of local firms to keep operating.

The paper proposes a draft government circular mandating payment discipline as a formal procurement requirement — measured not only by tenders issued or budgets spent, but by payment timeliness as a key performance indicator. It calls for accessible opportunity design, proportionate qualification criteria, transparent pipelines, and recurring framework contracts that give SMEs the commercial predictability they need to invest, hire, and grow.

The credentials behind this prescription matter. Ir Dato Paduka Malai Ali did not write from outside the system. He served within it for decades, including at senior levels across development, transport, communication, industry, primary resources, and civil service training. His diagnosis is not an outsider's complaint. It is institutional memory speaking with reformer's intent.

The paper's framework also helps explain why a digital payment system alone cannot solve what is ultimately a governance problem. A system can be procured. But the ecosystem around it — change management, inter-agency coordination, clear responsibility, vendor communication, and payment accountability — must also be built.

The government can buy platforms. But platforms do not automatically build discipline.

What Brunei has accumulated across two years is not merely a trail of complaints. It is a body of warning signs: public apologies, payment clinics, affected contractors speaking out, and continuing concern from the business community. A Payment Clinic may help resolve individual cases. But the wider issue demands a systemic answer — the kind that formal rules, measurable KPIs, and payment discipline across ministries and departments can provide.

Brunei has the diagnosis. A distinguished former public servant, who spent a career inside the machinery now being examined, has written a prescription. The 22nd LegCo session came and went without this issue receiving the prominence it deserved.

A new financial year has begun. Contractors are still asking whether payment discipline has truly been restored. The proposed circular has not yet become policy. Somewhere in Brunei, a business owner with decades of completed work behind him is deciding whether it is time to close the books — not because he failed, but because the system he served did not pay him on time.

Prompt payment is not generosity. It is an obligation.

And when an obligation is deferred long enough, it becomes, for those waiting, a quiet kind of injustice.

 

 

 

Malai Hassan Othman is a veteran Brunei journalist, columnist and policy advisor.

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INCLUSIVE BUSINESS: BRUNEI'S NEW TEST BEYOND WELFARE AND CSR

As Brunei begins mapping its inclusive business landscape, the real question is whether ordinary people can be brought into the economy as participants — not merely as recipients of help.

 By Malai Hassan Othman

For years, Brunei has been telling its people to become entrepreneurs. The harder conversation is what happens to those who try — and find the economy has no real room for them.

Behind every training programme, every grant ceremony, every MSME initiative launched with optimism, there are people who started and quietly stopped. Not because they lacked drive. Because the system around them — the financing, the procurement chains, the market access, the mentoring — was not designed to sustain them.

This is the uncomfortable territory that a new national exercise is now being asked to map.

It is called the Inclusive Business in Brunei Darussalam Landscape Study — a joint initiative involving the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the Brunei Economic Development Board, Yayasan Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Launched on 4 May 2026 at An-Naura Hall, Yayasan Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Complex, the study is followed by private sector consultations running through 8 May 2026.

The phrase Inclusive Business may not carry immediate meaning for the ordinary person. It does not have the familiar weight of welfare, zakat, grants or corporate social responsibility. But behind the terminology lies a serious proposition for Brunei: can the economy be shaped so that lower-income families, small suppliers, youth, women, persons with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups become part of the business chain itself — not as occasional beneficiaries, but as real commercial participants?

That is the question now being tested.

There is a difference between helping people and including them.

Welfare helps people survive. Charity eases hardship. CSR gives companies a way to give back. All have their place. But Inclusive Business asks for something more structurally demanding. It asks whether a company can build its actual business model — its supply chain, its workforce, its distribution network — around people who are normally left outside the formal economy.

The study draws on the G20 definition: inclusive businesses are companies that provide goods, services and livelihoods on a commercially viable basis to people at the base of the economic pyramid, integrating them into the core value chain as suppliers, distributors, retailers or customers.

That definition does the important work of separating Inclusive Business from feel-good charity.

It is not about giving someone a stall for a day. It is about whether that person can become a reliable supplier. Not hiring disadvantaged workers for publicity, but whether they can be trained, retained, protected and allowed to progress. Not helping a micro-entrepreneur once, but whether that entrepreneur can enter a real market, meet quality standards, access finance and survive beyond the first round of assistance.

For Brunei, this is not a foreign development concept imported for the sake of an ASEAN agenda. It sits at the centre of an economic challenge the country has been struggling to resolve for the better part of a decade.

Brunei has invested heavily in MSME development, entrepreneurship programmes and social support. The ambition is clear. The gap between that ambition and the lived experience of many small business owners, low-income families and disadvantaged workers remains visible and, in some areas, widening.

Many small businesses still cannot scale. Many young graduates still see the government as the safest employer. Many local suppliers still find larger procurement chains effectively closed to them. Many entrepreneurs can start — but not all of them survive the first two years, and far fewer build something that lasts.

Who gets to take part in the economy? Who gets access to real contracts? Who gets training that leads to genuine income? And who remains dependent on assistance because the market has no serious place for them?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the structural fault lines that any honest landscape study must be willing to name.

The interview framework developed for the study does not merely ask companies whether they are doing good. It asks harder questions: whether there is a commercial case for Inclusive Business in Brunei, what challenges prevent models from scaling, where financing gaps exist, what government policies help or hinder, and whether a formal recognition or accreditation system would add real value.

Those are the right questions.

Because without commercial viability, Inclusive Business becomes charity with nicer language. Without financing, it becomes another pilot project. Without procurement access, small suppliers stay small regardless of how many times they are encouraged to grow. Without impact measurement, anyone can claim to be inclusive. Without policy coherence, the concept stays trapped in workshops and reports — appearing in frameworks but not in income statements.

This is where Brunei's small size becomes both a constraint and an advantage.

The domestic market is limited. Many businesses already struggle with demand that is not big enough to sustain growth. For inclusive businesses expected to deliver both financial returns and social outcomes, the test is sharper still. But small size also enables faster coordination — if the institutional will exists. Government agencies, financial institutions, large companies, MSMEs and community organisations can be brought around the same table more quickly here than in larger economies. The challenge is not whether Brunei can convene the right conversations. The challenge is whether those conversations produce decisions.

One of the most consequential areas is procurement.

If large companies and government-linked entities are serious about inclusion, they must look honestly at how their supply chains actually work. Do they source from local MSMEs? Do they create genuine room for women-owned businesses, youth-led enterprises, social enterprises or community-based producers? Do they actively help small suppliers meet standards — or do they quietly reject them for not being ready, without ever helping them get ready?

The interview guide prepared for large corporations goes directly at this. It asks what percentage of procurement goes to inclusive or small suppliers, what barriers prevent their entry — quality, capacity, certification, price — and whether those barriers are being actively addressed or simply treated as convenient reasons to look elsewhere.

That line of questioning matters because inclusion cannot live on slogans.

A small food producer, a tailoring group, a farming cooperative, a community-based service provider or a youth-led digital business cannot grow if it is permanently excluded from serious markets. Training alone will not scale them. Motivation sessions will not pay their bills. Certificates will not win them orders.

They need buyers willing to invest in building capacity — not merely complain that small businesses are not ready.

For years, Brunei has encouraged entrepreneurship while placing most of the burden on the small entrepreneur. Be creative. Be resilient. Be innovative. All valid advice. But the system around them must also carry its share of the responsibility.

A micro-entrepreneur cannot become a serious supplier if payment is perpetually delayed. A small farmer cannot supply consistently without aggregation, cold-chain logistics or market assurance. A person with disability cannot be meaningfully employed if workplaces are not designed to include them. A single mother cannot sustain a home-based business without market access, fair pricing and practical support. A young entrepreneur cannot scale if financing for productive enterprise is harder to obtain than a vehicle loan.

These are not motivational failures. They are ecosystem failures.

That is precisely why the Inclusive Business study must not become another soft conversation about doing good. It should become a rigorous examination of where the Brunei economy quietly excludes the people it publicly claims to be helping.

The financing dimension deserves particular attention.

Inclusive businesses fall into a difficult category. They are not charities, so donations are not their sustainable model. But they are not always attractive to conventional lenders because returns may take longer, collateral may be weak, and impact cannot be captured by profit margins alone. The study's investor questions recognise this tension — asking about the availability of equity, debt, grants, blended finance and venture philanthropy, and whether there is genuine appetite for impact investing in Brunei. They also ask whether government co-investment, first-loss guarantees or tax incentives would change investor behaviour.

This is where Brunei may need to think beyond the instruments it already knows.

Not free money. Not endless grants. But patient capital, co-investment structures, blended finance and performance-based support that rewards genuine impact alongside commercial discipline. The worst outcome would be Inclusive Business becoming another grant-chasing exercise — models that breathe only as long as government support continues and collapse the moment it is withdrawn. The better model is government support designed to help companies build capacity, prove the concept and enter markets on their own terms. That is the difference between a subsidy and a bridge.

There is also the danger of confusing inclusion with low-paid work.

A company should not be praised as inclusive simply because it hires locals for low wages or assigns disadvantaged workers to basic tasks with no career path. Inclusion must mean more than placing people at the bottom of the economy and leaving them there. A genuinely inclusive model should improve income, expand skills, widen market access and build long-term prospects. It should not make poverty more productive for someone else's balance sheet.

This is why impact measurement is not a bureaucratic afterthought. Companies claiming to be inclusive should be asked: who benefited, by how much, for how long, and did the opportunity reduce dependency — or merely manage it more efficiently?

The sectors where Inclusive Business holds real promise in Brunei are not difficult to identify. Agriculture and food production are natural starting points as the country continues to build food security policy. Tourism can accommodate community-based operators, local guides, homestay providers and small food producers — and some are quietly doing this already, without the label. The halal industry creates space for local producers if standards, aggregation and logistics infrastructure are properly managed. The digital economy can reach youth and home-based entrepreneurs if platforms are built with genuine access in mind rather than as an afterthought. Care services, elderly support and community health will grow in importance as demographics shift.

But encouragement alone changes nothing. Each sector needs structure. Small food producers need offtake arrangements and cold-chain logistics. Community tourism operators need reliable visitor flows and real product development. Digital entrepreneurs need actual customers, not just connectivity. And in procurement, large buyers need to stop treating small suppliers as an inconvenience and start investing in them as the future of the supply chain. What the landscape study should surface — and what will matter most — is what is already working, quietly, without formal recognition. Because what already works can be formalised, financed and scaled.

The biggest test may ultimately be cultural.

Brunei is comfortable with welfare. Comfortable with CSR. Comfortable with government-led development as the default mode. Inclusive Business requires something more demanding and less comfortable. It asks government to enable rather than dominate. It asks companies to include rather than merely donate. It asks banks to weigh social outcomes without abandoning financial discipline. It asks MSMEs to professionalise. It asks communities to move from receiving help to building value.

That is a significant shift. It will not be accomplished by one landscape study. But the study can establish honestly where Brunei stands — which sectors are already quietly inclusive, why some models stall, whether financing or procurement access or policy ambiguity is the real bottleneck, and whether the country has the institutional architecture to support what comes after the report is published.

Most importantly, it can help Brunei determine whether Inclusive Business deserves a proper national framework — one with genuine teeth. Recognition or accreditation will carry weight only if tied to real value: procurement access, financing support, mentoring, measurable standards and market visibility. Otherwise it becomes another badge on a company profile, signalling nothing and changing less.

Wawasan Brunei 2035 cannot be carried by government alone. Economic diversification cannot be achieved by declaration. MSMEs cannot be expected to carry the future if they remain disconnected from serious markets. Social protection cannot rely forever on assistance without building pathways to sustained income.

Inclusive Business will not resolve all of these challenges. But it forces the right question: how do we build an economy where growth reaches more people because they are genuinely inside the system — not standing outside, waiting for help to arrive?

Behind the concept are real people. The young graduate who wants to build something but cannot access capital. The single mother trying to turn a real skill into reliable income. The small supplier who cannot break into procurement chains that were never designed to include him. The person with disability who wants work that is meaningful, not merely symbolic. The low-income family that does not want to remain dependent — and should not have to.

If Inclusive Business can bring these people into the real economy, it deserves serious and sustained attention.

But if it becomes only another fashionable term — appearing in strategies, featuring in conferences, and quietly fading from practice — Brunei will have missed the point again.

The country does not need more eloquent language about inclusion. It needs business models that prove inclusion works. And it needs a system prepared to support them when they do.

The landscape is now being mapped.

The harder question is whether Brunei is prepared to change the landscape once the map is drawn.

KopiTalk with MHO  |  kopitalkmho.blogspot.com