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.

 

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.

  

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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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