Brunei firms urged to look abroad

“In Brunei, [when it comes to] investing for growth, we should not think that big companies have the advantage. We ourselves should look at the theme and be encouraged to do investment abroad,” said Haslina Taib, the chief executive officer of BAG Networks who is also an Apec Business Advisory Council (Abac) representative for Brunei.

Touching on the theme for this year’s Abac annual report to be submitted to Apec leaders, Haslina said Abac will be pushing administrators in Brunei to establish a “go abroad” policy and also to spur investment in Brunei itself. While people may feel that Brunei is isolated, she said being a small country in the pacific region could mean that businesses could take advantage of the growth of a small country.

She said that with opportunities being available on a global scale, cash flow, know-how and business activities that Brunei businesses have could be an advantage.

She said localisation would help local companies with low confidence in doing projects within the nation to step up, learn and grow with foreign companies.

On the other hand, if a company has already gone through that, they should be able to go abroad, she said. “Once you have that partnership with foreign direct investors, technically you should already be partners in other projects,” she said.

Haslina said that Bruneian businesses can turn to regional neighbours to look for investment opportunities, where countries like Indonesia are growing at a rapid rate, while countries like Malaysia, China and Hong Kong also offer plenty of business opportunities.