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.
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
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