Brunei knows how to launch with ceremony, confidence and headlines. But what happens after the ribbon is cut and the cameras leave? With 153 unfinished RKN11 projects carried into RKN12, tarus hilang is no longer merely a joke. It is a question of delivery, transparency, amanah and lasting public trust.
KopiTalk with MHO
Bruneians have a phrase for it now. Launch it big. Launch it glamorous. Then — tarus hilang.
“We are very good at ribbon-cutting. We are not yet good at finishing.”
I did not go looking for this story. It found me, as many honest stories do, through a coffee-shop conversation that had migrated online.
The complaint was not new. Bruneians have raised it for years, quietly, during kopitalk sessions and through the private corridors of WhatsApp groups.
What was different was seeing the frustration expressed so plainly in public — and observing how many readers appeared to recognise the pattern immediately.
One online post accused the government of launching unfinished projects with considerable ceremony. Another reduced the entire complaint to a phrase requiring no translation here: tarus hilang.
Straight after the launch, it disappears.
A third post asked what had happened to infrastructure components supposedly intended to follow the opening of the Temburong Bridge. It also questioned why progress appeared faster across the border.
I cannot verify every claim attached to those discussions. Some details circulating about particular projects do not correspond neatly with the available public record.
I will not repeat what I cannot substantiate. Nevertheless, the underlying question is fair and deserves a factual response rather than a defensive one.
So, let us examine what the record actually shows.
The Record, Not the Rumour
Brunei's Eleventh National Development Plan, or RKN11, contained 221 projects. When its status was reported to the Legislative Council in March 2024, 54 had been completed.
Another 72 remained under implementation, while 95 were still at various planning, design or tender stages. That distinction matters: unfinished does not automatically mean abandoned.
Yet it also means that barely one-quarter of the projects listed under the plan had reached completion before Brunei moved into its next development cycle.
The broader economic picture was equally sobering. Brunei's gross domestic product contracted by 1.8 per cent during the first quarter of 2025.
Nominal GDP per capita also declined from BND51,645 in 2022 to BND44,996 in 2024 — a reduction exceeding BND6,600 within two years.
GDP per capita is not the same as household income. Nevertheless, its decline points towards an economy producing less value per person and operating with narrower fiscal room.
These figures do not explain individual project delays. They do, however, underline why Brunei can afford neither weak execution nor development spending that remains tied up without producing timely public benefit.
RKN12 allocates BND4 billion across 305 projects during its five-year implementation period from 2024 to 2029.
Significantly, 153 are projects carried forward from RKN11, while 152 are new. The unfinished past therefore occupies almost half of Brunei's current development programme.
For the 2026/27 financial year, BND480 million has been allocated to development expenditure, including schools, healthcare facilities, transport technology and food-production infrastructure.
Every one of those investments may be worth pursuing. No reasonable citizen should want fewer classrooms, weaker emergency services or outdated public infrastructure.
The question is not whether Brunei should plan ambitiously. It is whether ambition on paper has learnt enough from projects that struggled against deadlines, procurement and implementation.
What “Delivery” Looks Like Next Door
This is where the comparison being made by Bruneians online deserves examination, even when the original viral claims behind it remain uncertain.
Across the border, the Sarawak–Sabah Link Road Phase 2 includes plans for Sarawak's first road tunnel, to be constructed under one of the project packages in Limbang.
The proposed 2.24-kilometre tunnel is intended to reduce a winding route of approximately 22.4 kilometres to around seven kilometres while limiting extensive hill cutting.
It forms part of a much larger and technically demanding road programme expected to continue until 2029. It should not be mistaken for a completed achievement.
Nor is this comparison intended to declare that one side of the border invariably performs better. Malaysia has its own catalogue of delays, cost overruns and abandoned promises.
The useful comparison is simpler: major infrastructure requires visible progress long after the announcement, sustained through the difficult years between groundbreaking and public use.
That is where public confidence is either earned or quietly lost.
Why This Keeps Happening
This is not about blaming one ministry, officer or contractor. Blame may provide temporary satisfaction, but it seldom explains why similar difficulties survive successive development plans.
The pattern is structural because the incentives surrounding a launch are different from those governing implementation, monitoring and eventual handover.
A launch photographs well. A groundbreaking ceremony fits neatly into a press release. Progress becomes harder to publicise when construction falls behind schedule or remains caught between agencies.
Nobody organises a ceremony for a project entering another year of planning. There is no ribbon to cut for “still under implementation”.
Procurement, inter-agency coordination and administrative delays are frequently offered as explanations when development timelines slip.
Those obstacles will not disappear under RKN12 merely because the allocation is larger or because the projects carry greater expectations.
Something more useful than another launch photograph would therefore serve the public: a central tracking mechanism showing the current status of every RKN12 project.
It should state what has been approved, tendered, awarded, started, delayed, revised and completed — together with original timelines, updated deadlines and expenditure to date.
Such disclosure would not obstruct development. It would protect successful ministries and contractors from being unfairly grouped with projects that have genuinely disappeared from public view.
It would also allow citizens to distinguish between reasonable delays, technical complications and failures that deserve closer administrative attention.
National development is financed from resources administered for the country and its future generations. Citizens therefore have a legitimate interest in knowing whether publicly announced commitments are being delivered.
In the broader spirit of amanah, Bruneians have every reason to ask whether those resources are being managed carefully and whether national priorities are being delivered as promised.
Transparency is not an accusation. It is the evidence that allows public confidence to survive when timelines change and difficult decisions must be explained.
Ending Note
Tarus hilang is a joke until it is not.
It sounds amusing in an online thread. It becomes considerably less amusing when the missing timeline concerns a kampong flood-mitigation project, a school extension or a health facility.
Bruneians are not asking for less ambition. They are asking that what is started be completed before the next grand undertaking occupies the stage.
That is a modest request, made in the spirit of loyalty rather than grievance: announce responsibly, report honestly and finish what has been promised.
Until the gap between ceremony and delivery closes, even the loudest launch will be followed by the quietest question a citizen can ask:
So — did it happen, or did it tarus hilang?
KopiTalk with MHO
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