Political independence gave us a nation. Economic sovereignty requires something more: builders, institutions and the courage to produce each new generation. Before asking who occupies our economy today, perhaps we should first ask ourselves what we stopped building yesterday. #KopiTalk
Part 3: The Mirror We Must Face
We once produced builders. The harder question is whether we built enough successors.
(Read here for Part1: The Unfinished Agenda and Part 2: Anjakan Paradigma
By Malai Hassan Othman
There was a time when Brunei spoke confidently about producing Bumiputera entrepreneurs as captains of industry.
It was more than a slogan.
It was a national aspiration.
The idea appeared in our development planning and reflected the optimism of a young nation that had just reclaimed full independence. Political sovereignty had been achieved. The next ambition was equally clear — Bruneians would become the architects, engineers, contractors and business leaders responsible for building their own country’s future.
For a while, that ambition seemed well within reach.
Many of the pioneers came from government service.
Architects left the Public Works Department. Engineers, quantity surveyors, land surveyors and technical officers walked away from secure careers that most people would have been reluctant to leave. They exchanged certainty for risk because they believed a newly independent nation needed more than a capable government.
It needed capable local enterprises too.
The emergence of firms such as Arkitek Ibrahim, Arkitek Idris and other pioneering Bumiputera professional practices was not an accident. They became part of a generation that helped design the buildings, roads, housing estates and public infrastructure that still serve this country today.
They demonstrated that Bruneians were capable not only of administering development, but of leading it.
As a young draftsman, I had the privilege of seeing part of that generation from close quarters. What impressed me most was not the buildings themselves.
It was the confidence.
There was a quiet belief that Bruneians could build their own nation with their own hands, their own knowledge and their own professional pride.
That confidence deserves to be remembered.
Not because the past was perfect.
But because it proved something important.
Brunei has never lacked talent.
And then?
That is where the mirror begins.
The story of Brunei’s economic life since independence is not only a story of what was built. It is also a story of what was not built — the spaces left open, the arrangements that became normalised, the gap between political sovereignty and economic dignity that has remained more visible than many would like to admit.
We know the names.
Ali Baba. Ali Chandran. Ali Bangla.
They are not really about ethnicity. They describe three structural patterns that have quietly shaped our commercial landscape across four decades. And muhasabah requires that we look at each one honestly — not to assign blame, but because patterns that are never named cannot be corrected.
Ali Baba is the arrangement most Bruneians recognise but few discuss openly.
The licence is Bruneian. The letterhead is Bruneian. The name on the contract is Bruneian.
But the capital, the expertise, the day-to-day operation and — in many cases — the profit belong elsewhere. The Bruneian name provides access. The foreign partner provides much of what is required to execute the work.
The consequence is measurable.
The DPPMB 3rd World Café — held in 2016, the third in a series of national consultations — found that under the Ministry of Development’s procurement structure, only 3 per cent of development project allocations reached Class I, II and III Bruneian companies. The recommended threshold for meaningful local business development was 40 per cent.
That was nine years ago.
The recommendation is still waiting.
The contract goes out.
The Bruneian name is on it.
Three per cent arrives.
That number does not describe foreigners taking what is ours.
It describes a system we built — one that too often rewards access over ability, connections over competence, and the appearance of local ownership over its substance.
Ali Chandran requires a different kind of honesty.
Walk through the commercial districts of Bandar Seri Begawan. Through Kiulap. Through Gadong. Through the older shophouse rows that have served this city for generations.
Look at who opens early.
Who closes last.
Who has built, patiently and quietly over decades, a commercial presence that is now structural — in retail, provision, small manufacturing and the daily economic texture of every neighbourhood.
South Asian enterprise has occupied a commercial middle ground that local enterprise largely left available.
This is not said in resentment.
These are people who identified opportunity, accepted risk, managed costs and remained disciplined through difficult years.
They did what entrepreneurs do.
The question muhasabah asks is not about them.
It asks about the space they occupy.
Brunei’s retail sector alone was valued at around BND 448 million in the first quarter of 2024. It touches every Bruneian family every single day. Yet local ownership and genuine local operation remain, by most honest assessments, the exception rather than the norm.
Part of the explanation is structural. Private domestic consumption contributes only around 17 per cent of Brunei’s GDP — compared to approximately 50 per cent in larger economies such as China. Our economy has long been sustained by government expenditure and hydrocarbon revenue. The commercial middle ground did not fill itself.
It was left open.
And others, to their credit, filled it.
The mirror does not ask why they came.
It asks why we left the space.
Ali Bangla completes the picture at the ground level.
Industry data has consistently shown that construction, logistics, retail support and domestic services remain heavily dependent on migrant labour.
The familiar response is that Bruneians do not want these jobs.
That may be partly true.
But it is not the whole answer.
And muhasabah does not accept half-answers.
The private-sector wage structure often makes these roles genuinely unattractive. Government employment offers greater security and, in a small society where failure is highly visible, represents the rational choice for many young Bruneians.
The migrant worker did not displace the Bruneian worker.
The conditions that would have made those roles attractive and sustainable for Bruneians were never sufficiently built.
Taken together, these three patterns tell a single story.
Not a story about foreigners.
A story about choices.
Choices made by individuals, institutions and a culture that — perhaps understandably, cushioned by oil wealth — did not always treat commercial discipline and economic ownership as urgent national priorities.
And choices made by governments that sometimes allowed good ideas to lose momentum when leadership changed.
The same DPPMB World Café highlighted another uncomfortable reality: initiatives often stalled not because the ideas lacked merit, but because continuity was lost. Leadership changed. Priorities shifted. Institutional memory faded. Programmes that had begun to gain traction quietly disappeared.
Knowledge without action changes very little.
But action without continuity is little better.
This is where the dignity argument becomes impossible to avoid.
When a Bruneian entrepreneur cannot secure a primary contract without another party carrying much of the commercial capability — what does that say about the maturity of our own ecosystem?
When a young Bruneian walks through the commercial heart of his own city and quietly feels that the most economically visible participants are not his own people — what does that do to his belief in what is possible?
These are not rhetorical questions.
They are questions a nation serious about economic sovereignty must be willing to ask — not in anger, not in self-pity, but with the honesty that muhasabah demands.
The pioneers understood that.
They did not wait for the ecosystem to be perfect.
They stepped forward and helped build parts of it themselves.
What muhasabah reveals is not that we lack their ability.
It reveals that, over four decades, we made choices that did not always put that ability to work in our own long-term economic interest.
The ecosystem they began — financing, mentorship, procurement discipline, cooperatives, patient capital and institutional continuity — was never fully completed.
An ecosystem that remains incomplete cannot fully deliver the economic sovereignty that political independence envisioned.
That remains the unfinished work.
Economic sovereignty is not achieved by declaration.
It is built through people.
One architect.
One engineer.
One contractor.
One shop owner.
One cooperative.
One institution.
One generation willing to prepare the next.
The mirror does not lie.
It shows us an economy that is politically ours but not yet fully shaped by our own economic strength.
It shows us a commercial landscape shaped as much by what we failed to build as by what others patiently built for themselves.
It shows us the distance between the nation we declared ourselves to be in 1984 and the economic capability we still need to deepen today.
That distance is not fixed.
It is not permanent.
It is not beyond correction.
But it cannot be corrected until it is honestly seen.
That is what this mirror is for.
KopiTalk with MHO • The Unfinished Agenda • Part 3 of 5
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