I am going to share with you the finding of a little exercise I did at the beginning of my research. After reading all of Brunei’s National Development Plans, cover to cover, I made a matrix (which I must say is not an easy exercise!) of each RKN/NDP’s objectives, strategies, finance allocations and the targeted economic projects/industries to be developed.
Today, I am going to show you the list of targeted industries/projects beginning from the third National Development Plan (as the first two mere talked about physical infrastructure). The aim of this is to sort of reflect, remind ourselves and see how far we have gone to achieve any of the targeted projects. If we have, how successful was it? If we haven’t then the question we should ask is why? (Unfortunately I do not have the data to measure the achievements).
(Apology for the untidy presentation and BEST VIEWED using FireFox!)
3rd NDP (1975-79)
1. Rice production
2. Agriculture: sweet corn, yellow beans and high protein cattle grass.
3. Livestock: meat and eggs.
4. Castor oil plant
5. Tree crops: pineapple plantations and palm oil estates
6. Fisheries: marine fish
7. Forestry: establishment of a Kraft Pulp Paper Mill and a timber complex.
8. Other mineral resources: development of gravel in Temburong, silica sand in Tutong and coastal terrace clay and ceramic clay in Jerudong.
9. Tourism: Construction of hotels.
10. Oil and gas: Ammonia and Urea plants
Agro based industry: sago processing plant
4th NDP (1980-84)
1) Rice production
2) Livestock production: goat farm, cattle breeding.
3) Uplands crop: maize, soya beans, cowpeas for animal feeds
4) Fisheries: fresh water fish
5) Forestry: timber production
6) Other minerals: Silica land in Tutong (with reserves of 20 million tons), sand mining and pottery/tile industry based on coastal terrace clay and ceramic clay
7) Agro industries: vegetable oil, castor oil, animal feed, leather works, oil-palm, fruit juice and puree factory, orchard growing for export, coconut oil extraction and fibre factory
5th NDP (1986-90)
1) Agriculture and livestock industry:
• Rice, Tropical Fruits, Vegetables, Cattle, buffalo and goat, Chicken and Eggs
2) Fisheries:
• Marine fish, Aquaculture: freshwater and brackish water, Fish meal
3) Forestry:
• Using swamp forest product for plywood, Fibre-board factory using woodchips from the sawmill factories
4) Manufacturing:
• Food processing: canning and packaging,
• Furniture
• Potteries and Tiles
• Textiles: high value added types of garments using modern and traditional technologies
• Cement factory to grind imported clinker
• Precast concrete factory
• Chemicals and dyes
• Plywood and Wood paneling
• Glass from silica sands in Tutong
5) Tertiary Industry: Banking and finance, Insurance, Maintenance services
6) Financial Centre
7) Trade Centre
8) High value-added, non-labour intensive industries
9) Bio industry
6th NDP (1991-1995)
1) Industry
• Industrial sites to be developed in 3 districts
• Identified industries are:
o Mini steel plant
o Light-weight aggregate
o Dairy milk
o Glass
o Pre-cast
2) Agriculture:
o Rice
o Hydrophonic vegetables
o Eggs and poultry
o Local fruits and production of seedlings
o Horticulture
o Buffaloes and goats
3) Forestry: Rattan plantation for furniture industry
4) Fisheries: Marine fish
7th NDP (1996-2000)
1) Oil sector:
• Plan to develop the oil and gas industry into downstream activities including:
i. Ammonia/Urea
ii. Methanol
iii. Export Oriented Refinery
iv. Other Petrochemical such as plastics and paints
2) Primary Sector:
• To produce 7% of rice requirements;
• To maintain the self-sufficiency level of egg production;
• To meet 70% of local chicken needs;
• Increase production of vegetables, plants and ornaments and livestocks;
• Aquaculture projects tp produce high values species for export
8th NDP (2001-2005)
1) Oil and gas sector:
• Oil and gas downstream activities
2) Industry
• Value-added industry such as food processing
• Export specialized services such as engineering, Islamic banking, law, economy, accounting, architecture and estate management.
• Manufacturing: Construction materials and equipment, garment and furniture.
3) Primary Sector
• Agriculture targets:
3% of rice requirement
To meet 94% of vegetable needs
To meet 47% self-sufficiency in fruit production.
Increase production of ornamentals horticulture industry.
• Livestock industry:
• Broiler industry to meet 100% self-sufficiency
• Poultry production to maintain 100% self sufficiency level.
• Fishery sector:
• Production of rostris prawn
• Production of other fish species such as mud crab, golden snapper and barramundi cod.
4) Tourism and Trade
• Develop more eco-tourism destinations.
• Promotion of cottage industry such as:
• Traditional food, Weaved cloths, Rattan furniture, Plaited products, Malay Cap, Sculptures and carving, Woodwork, Silverware, Brassware, Malay dagger, Boats
5) Banking, Finance and Insurance
• To become an international financial centre through BIFC
6) Other promoted sectors:
• ICT for k-ekonomy; Transhipment activities.
Personally, I believe there is nothing wrong for us to come up with ‘new ideas’ for new projects each year, but we need to supply our ‘ideas’ (especially the fancy ones) with some strategies and plan of execution I suppose. Otherwise, it will just be another list in the non-exhaustive yet-to-be-achieved projects.
I have done the basic dirty work of compiling this list. For anyone out there who is thinking of pursuing a Masters degree and/or a PhD, I hope this is of some use to you. (Panjang amal). This could be used as a basis of developing a research question, I think.
Salaam.
35 comments:
for each ideas from the ivory tower, how are they implemented and how much budget for each... is there a proper monitoring to ensure the national goal is reached?
i m interested in the fish hehe, if we can cut down the 25% imports for starters :)
hmmm the one thing about ehms, they only talk but no action or implementation sigh...
true, we don't necessary need to develop everything at the same time, just focus & allocate larger budget to those most likely to be successfully implemented.
personally i like the transshipment activities; if you look at southeast asia map, brunei is right in the center, and would have been a busy transshipment destination if our port isn't so crappy & domestic-like.
international offshore financial center is doable too - most countries with no personal income tax did that successfully (i.e. bermuda, monaco, bahamas), and brunei is the only country in asia without such tax, the nearest would be UAE. rid that limitations and let others freely setup offshore a/c and companies here (at the moment foreigners registering companies are required to find at least one local partner)
tourism is quite hard, a lot more to go & do.. for a start though the govt can setup low-cost carrier like airasia/tigerair that fly people into brunei then other destinations at hyperlow cost. maybe also some plans to acquire cruise companies & making them include brunei as a stopover point in their itinerary.
agriculture, livestock, crops & fisheries are tough, few wanna be farmers or fishermen due to unreliable income, so setting up some govt-sponsored trading companies that guaranteed purchase of all produce by farmers/fishermen might be a good idea. let them concentrate on producing all they can, and left the worries of selling, maintaining & stockpiling to others. this will likely increase national food production by miles.
we should stop branching ourselves trying to develop tons of industries at once, just concentrate on 2; oil refining & timber/lumber products. our neighbors sabah, sarawak & kalimantan have so vast a reserve of lumber & oil that it can feed the inhabitants (not their whole parent countries) for 50 generations. we can buy as much of these resources into brunei as possible. just imagine how many industries and factories can be setup to process them; oil to propane, fuels, petrol, lubricants, paraffin, sulfur, tar/gravel, asphalt, coke, and petrolechemcals like methanol, ethylene, propylene, benzene, detergents, nylon, polyesters, acetone, engine coolant, and more, while lumber/timber to plywood, furniture, wood pulp, rosewood, paper and more. we would be so busy industrializing ourselves to produce all these commodities, and even if oil runs out, the refinery can just be converted to chemical plant.
but of course, we need people who really act to materialize something, not those sitting on the big chair, imagine something wild then starting making speeches, showing off development plans, and after that back to sleep.
mike, u serious abt the transhipment, by that i understand ports services in PMB... we wil be competing against singapore n hongkong who already have established themselves for years, together with other facilities they can provide, think, even if we have the world's finest port, wud them ships stop by our place when they can go to singapore and hongkong and enjoy lots of facilities already available.. r we goin to be able to compete, please elaborate on ur transhipment argument... even now we r having difficulties coping :p
Yeah, mike, baz has every reason to doubt transhipment viability due to much closer competitions like Sepangar in Sabah or even Sarawakian port towns of Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu and Miri for that matter. Your oil refining thingy should have taken off ages ago on Pulau Muara Besar had Shell smart-alecs NOT advised against the idea - why of course Singapore's Pulau Bukom is Shell International Petrochemical's baby oyster which they have groomed into their Pearl of the Orient when Shell pumped in US$BIG Bs (billions) recently! Talk about Shell's 2-faced double standards! For an industrialised nation-wannabe, a mini steel plant for Brunei is a key ingredient... And it was listed in the 6th NDP! But as grandiose as it may sound, it never materialises. Today steel prices skyrocketed, contractors can only die standing even if infra-structural projects gonna mushroom! Import costs jack up, too so do wood, cement, glass, etc. I think better go into APs:)
when baz interested on fish, i will be interested on tourism n trade espc on food :D
btw thanx for summarising 'em ;)
salam HM
wow,Haji Romzi is actually my old classmate!!! havent seen him for more than a decade!!! lolz... thanks to ur blogdrive nina, and good job too on them biscuits hehhe
hey did i say a decade? lolz, its 2 decades now heheh, anyway, i got a lot of stick on my fish issue so tks for the back up altho, i still feel with proper monitoring we can make something out of it like iceland, altho in a much smaller scale :p
if its well-managed, it might be :) look at hamburg, rotterdam, antwerp & felixstowe, they are so close to each others yet all are the busiest ports in the world. klang emerges as a major port despite being just north of singapore. the competing factor does not stop all these ships to use klang and bypass singapore. i stick to my conclusion brunei is in a strategic location between east asian markets and singapore, just like jamaica (another major transhipment destination) is between north america & panama.
i still don't get why we must listen to shell? we have grown so dependent on it. if they don wan, fine, like malaysia we setup our own 'petronas' which specializes in oil refining. we can't ask them to leave yet, as that would put brunei economy in standstill, they will continue doing their drilling & extraction parts while we the refining parts together with those oil we bought through neighbors. an export port should be build in belait so oil & refined petroleum products can be shipped right away, why carry around again everyday to muara, causing inconvenience at the highway.
mike, ur not comparing like with like, brunei isnt goin to be in that situation, who works at docks? we r goin to be backwards with "cooleys" like the old british colonial days... in the first place, do we have it?
ur talking about good old RALFH!!! (Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre, Felixstowe and Hamburg), its been established in 2002 coz they need to harmonise... as for brunei, we wud be swallowed up lolz
ur eg. port klang has been established since 1901!!! and yet singapore port is the world's busiest container port!!! singapore (due to its "importing" natural resources) in addition has hospitality services beign a port of call forexample restocking a ship's food and water supplies, etc... even then surpassed on cargo tons handled by shanghai!!!
we nid to focus on something unique, esp a small country like ours... pls dun succumb to past colonial masters who are good with words and follow whats good for the nation... fish i'd say hehe (just 10% of iceland + 9 other small industries, wont make us rich but self-sufficient) and with proper monitoring as u said earlier :P
Yup! Agreed 200% with baz-the-baz i.e. 100 per cent each! Heheheh:) Hhmm 'buzz-da-buzz' sounds cool, eh! Gr8 combo, u2 guyz;)
The fishy thingy needs a complimentary industry which could only be the brand packaging of canning (and tanning, too?). Too bad tin or aluminium foil imports gonna add up to the costing sky-high now. So I guess Dato Tim is right after all that an Aluminum Smeltin' idea a.k.a Alcoa is kinda indispensable unless I could bring in another world rival to Alcoa! Hahahah:) That will be the day!;)
Oh one last fishy thingy -- how's the world market demand for Salmon and Tuna like these days anyways?
Any ideas baz-the-baz if we could still export to Japan, Taiwan, US, Canada, Europe, etc? Or better still we should export directly to the Middle East (opening up yet?)..
lol, we r the same ppl... im not even thinkin of exports yet, i m thinkin since the fishy dept claimed we import 25% of our fish, why dun we make ourselves self-sufficient 1st, and zero imports, that way we save... we cud still export after surpluses :)
ps: since mike claimed in another post that we will have ~105bn reserves by 2023(wishful thinking again!), i still dun think it wud be sufficient for our growing population and current spending needs, so our mindsets need to be readjusted into self-sufficient mentality :)
i hav no comments on the aluminium smeltin altho i heard theyve been a much bigger one in bintulu unless its rumours lol... once thing's for sure, we dun need aluminium tins or cans for packaging (if we r venturing into support industry watever, lauk masin hahahahah), we can use alternatives, i m pretty sure of it :)
so 1 of the 10 industries wud be fish heheh :)
u guys think of others, altho iceland does venture into aluminium doesnt necessarily wud be good for us tho...
Think BIG DREAM big, guys... make self-sufficiency as No. 1 GOAL but export industry as BIG FAT BONUS! Hehehhe:P
we had talks like this 12 years ago. but once working in a department, that kind of ideas are just gone and everyday we work to make ends meet? so yea... we only think about the futre of our kids, our family and so. Study, got a degree, got a position too and work, save money, but a house, get promoted (same salary still). so yea.
I'm contempelating of quiting my job n start farming. That will be the sacrifise i will make.
conclusion,
Our System will never change! We still practise traditional trend. It can't go wrong with the right attitute and having faith.
hope all of you will be in the cabinet and have the courage to explain thoroughly to our ruler.
Berbudi kepada tanah atau bercucuk tanam memanglah suatu ikhtiar dan usaha yang mulia terutama sekali jika disertai dengan niat Lillahi Taala. Instead of a high-flying bureaucrat or technocrat like Mr unanimous before me to sacrifice his good office, why doesn't the government recruit all able-bodied unemployed amongst young Bruneians (school dropouts)to be directly hired as padi farmers and agricultural workers e.g. goat shepherds, poultry/vegetable, aquaculture farmers, etc.?
Well done for your efforts and thanks for sharing your research. The overview of our National Development Plans is quite revealing. Perhaps its would be worthwhile to checkout this website www.aspirasi-ndp.com and see what others in the Brunei political arena have to say about it.
I used to give some comments and ideas on Agriculture and Tourism during my job interview in Brunei last yr. But the interviewers thought that I was criticizing Brunei instead. As an economist, every ideas and comments are support with evidence.I did mention about why we must focus on agriculture in case of food crisis because we rely too much on imports.not only that the oil price will continue to increase which will affect the transportation cost.and this will leads to the increase in the price of goods/product.and the story of economics go on and on.I also mention about Banana Plantation that HM mentioned during the LegCo. The thing here is, it is OK that we plan so many things for the development of our country, but research for each project might take sometime before implement it. Therefore, from that research we can identify which area will give a better outcome for our economy.
Talking about tourism, we should follow what Singapore do. Whenever Malaysia promotes Visit Malaysia, singapore will also promote Uniquely Singapore,so that tourists not only visit Malaysia, but also singapore. So Brunei at least can take advantage of that by promoting tourism to Brunei during that same year. Brunei should already plan what to promote for tourism. we can take advantage of HM's bday for tourism since it's during the summer holidays.
sorry if my comments are a bit long. thank you
I 'm not sure why the Brunei's NDP had not focused on the need for rice self suuficiency for too long. Just look at the figures the 7th NDP suugested a 7& rice target regurements, while in the next 8th NDP it fell to a hugely 3% target requirement. The govt budget planners must explain why this happened.
back, gosh nearly forgot the url of this site :) ah.. baz, u are not thinking tat i was suggesting we try to surpass or get equal with s'pore or hk, did you? even in my most optimistic scenarios, i did not forsee that. but we can attempt to seize some percentage of the region's shipping activities and put our port on the map. like anonymous said above, ports like in sepangar, kuching, sibu, bintulu & miri are competing with us, we must move a step ahead and get ourselves established before them. s'pore would have dried out if m'sia is allowed to outrank it from the beginning, similarly we would become quite irrelevant if sabah/sarawak move ahead us. once they beat us, they will forever surpass us as they become more prosperous and cash-available. just imagine one day bruneians start to use miri port for import/export as it's 'better' and more 'convenient' (i did heard many businessmen complaining muara port is slow & filled with hassling red-tapes. since we are considered a 'rich' nation (well, relatively richer gov't that is - im poor :( ), why not utilize that resources properly? like you said, anything is possible :) s'pore beats shanghai which supposedly serve three of the world top economies; china, japan & korea, brain is the factor.
fishing is good, come to think of it i like tuna & salmon :D though i agree we can never be a net exporter of sea food. our fishing boats would be swamped by filipino, vietnamese, malaysian, chinese, thai or indonesian fishermen by ratio of 1:300 if they enter south china sea (those people even invade our seas) fishing can make us self-sufficient in sea-food which is cool, but my mind is set on something which can be exported and earn us foreign currencies :P the $105bn reserves is just some technical calculation, i think much of it will 'vanished' by that time, perhaps too much failed projects? i'm not so confident we can reach that amount.
as to how we attract others to our port, i bundled it with the exports of refined petroleum products & forestry products as stated in my above post. there i suggest buying as much timber/lumber & oil from our neighbours sabah, sarawak & kalimantan (they have abundant of it), transport them here, then setup industries to process them, becoming somehow the manufacturing center for such products in borneo. with roughly 20-30% of world's population living under poverty line (depending on how u define poverty), we know where to find labors provided we aren't so hostile or hold strong prejudice views against these foreigners. ships from middle east / south asia to east asia and vice-versa can stopover here to carry our end-products, i'm sure their growing economies need it.
alcoa's rival is alcan, but surely we don't wanna angered them by inviting alcan, do we? =) let them do the profit 'test' smoothly in brunei.. its already a very small market, hehe.
i agree, anonymous, our work ethnics & attitude play an important role. in many developed countries, if something don't work out, someone in high position will be responsible for it or even sacked. we just can't simply say 'nevermind la' to all projects which missed its original target - they cost millions!
zazy, i'm sad they think you're criticizing brunei. i hope we can have an open economic debate here like that in the US without fears or etc (i.e, common people, not only ministers or vips can talk freely) i like to hear other views, as i believe each opinion is sincere and does contributed to ideas development. for tourism, we have crippled what is uniquely ours - jerudong park. its the greatest mistake i think.
anonymous, they might reduce to 1% in the next NDP =P it shows they are not even confident if their plan can really work. explanation: thai rice is bigger & more attractive to locals :P
well mike, it took u a while to reply but then u said it urself, we r never goin to compete with singapore and hk... so after investing in millions into the project (like PMB), we just wanna play 2nd fiddle to them??? we wud be ruined!!! lol...
a small country like ours has to hav that something unique, a niche market... something another similarly small country like iceland is doin (nearly 4bn in fish exports)... anyway, our ppl's mindsets has to be changed, same like when u said thai rice is much more attractive to locals when we have beras kabun, which is quite good once u get used to it, i recalled my dad was tellin me they were eating tapioca during the japs invasion, and even then they survived... so being self-sufficient is what we shud be aiming for, and coincidentally our beloved HM the Sultan also stated in his recent titah :)
EHMs are in our midst after all :p
baz, being 2nd tier won't ruin us. similarly, u can see why microsoft is so willing & attempting to acquire yahoo for a gigantic $30+bn (more than all its cash on hands) just so to become another second-class search engine (combined market share 25%) vs google market share of 66%. if it gives us a foundation in the shipping trade, a better-than-before competitive edge, and open up slots and other possibilities to accomodate further industrial expansion and higher exports, why not? :)
i would like the country to be self-sufficient, it gives us some sort of pride. however, my opinion hasn't gear towards that yet. tiny s'pore & hk till date haven't reach self-sufficency (yes, they may have 10 times more people than us, but they also have 10 times more highly-educated labors, world-class technologies plus outstanding efficiency to do that shall they wish) they have so far chosen the manufacturing (buying resources & reselling finished goods) and service (tourism & banking) industries. they did not want their nation & territory to engage too much in the primary industry and hence becoming an agricultural state, as they know it was the strong manufacturing base (and therefore leading to richer businesses and better financial infrastructure) that bring imperial britain & the current US into world power, and china (seen 'made in china'?) into another emerging power. these are the areas that can generate great wealth.
iceland is highly dependent on fishing, fishing accounts for 13% of its GDP, employs 10% of the active population, and provides 40% of export trade for iceland. their country is strongly committed to the development of their fisheries as such. the question is... does brunei has this kind of determination to do that too? consider iceland has roughly the same population and more technologically developed than brunei, are 10% of brunei population ready to take up fishing job? another 10% farming rice? 10 more percent on intensive fruit gardening, 10% again on vegetable farming, another 10% on livestock, 10% more on crop plantation, and 10% for miscellaneous food? iceland's only option is fishing as its a lone island surrounded by a large block of seas (i.e. shipping in resources takes time be it from canada or europe, and more costly if the ships are deliberately headed only for iceland) moreover, iceland has over 100 salmon rivers and countless rivers and lakes for trout fishing - fishermen's dream. also self-sufficient means enough for the people, no earnings from exports :) if you can put thousands of people to earn millions of foreign earnings, or thousands of the same people to gain self-sufficiency - resulting in zero foreign earnings & maybe require further gov't subsidies, which would you choose?
brunei is blessed by having poor land neighbors (as in huge difference in wealth gap) with abundant natural resources. its our responsibilities and rights to exploit their low-cost labors & resources for our own industrialization and development desires. their resources can be processed into tons of consumer goods contributing to our industrial development & export dollars.
our people's minds can of course be changed, via mass media :P but the concern is whether we have enough supply? people don wanna to wait, they want it right now, and if demands for local rice cant be satisfied they just turn to something else. the authorities aren't even sure if they can provide stable supply, that's why the 8th NDP reduced target by 4%?
will again take a while to respond, its weekend, enjoy! :D
mike, when i said playing 2nd fiddle, i dun literally mean we will be "2nd tier"!... if PMB, to build it wud costs millions... and then to maintain it, wud be more... there's so many ports around as competition much more established than us lol, ths is based on the brunei experience, we have competed in the air, billions invested, huges losses... now u want us to compete in the sea??? come on, be realistic...
i also resented ur comment that self-sufficiency as sense of pride, lol!!! its all about our "survival", teaching our ppl the basics, ani kan mengail ikan pun, harapkan org indon, pilipin, cemana tah rakyat kitani kan pandai berdikari, lurus tu cakap Raja kitani baru-baru ani, baras kabun...
my example of iceland, if their fishing is 70-80% of their economy which generates 4bn per annum, then i'd say we target just 10% of our economy along with other industries, cut down the 25% of our fish imports...
we must follow like the late Begawan dulu, we start little, bit by bit, apa apa ani... jgn tarus2... kalau untung, labur kan lagi... cost benefit analysis, basic financial management etc
changing ppl's minds thru "mass media"??? come onn, we go back to basics, the ppl's mindsets, we teach our children from the family, do prayers together, have meals together, donot entertain kids too much, jgn lluan d dulur, bagi mobile 2nd hand sja...anak laki2 bawa ke masjid, sembahyang jemaah, ke pasar membali lauk, jgn ke macdonald sja, anak bini, ajar tia mendangani babunya menyuci sayur2an, memasak, membuat kek roll kah macam nin suria ah etc
jgntah kan labih, membuat port tia, mcam pengaruh org putih, banyak kan bersederhana... atu tah yg ku maksud kan... kalau anak2 nakal, tagur dulu, lapas matingal, acut ia sikit... ani kanak2 sekarang labih-labih, nda ia sadar kitani org brunei dulu lari ke hutan masa time perang jepun...
sadar tah... kekayaan nda selamany, nada lagi kitani berpencen, TAP atu, duiiii, nda cukup tu ah, believe me, if u do a Net Present Value / Future Value Calculations, u'd be in deficit...
to be honest, i'd go for the 10% in fish industries and 9 other industries, start bit by bit...
yg penting, kalau kitani membuat 10 industries ani, d pantau tia bisai2, kalau ada program membagi rambat, bot kecil kepada nelayan tempatan, monitor progress durang, d bond durang atu 5 tahun kah, jgn krg kalau d bagi equipment, tau tah kitani melayu ani, lapas 3 bulan, nda sanggup, d jual nya utk membali kereta, paloi paloi... sama jua industry lain atu, monitor tia banar2, buat program implementasi yg betul betul, lurus-lurus... atu sja, insya-allah berjaya tu :)
macam d singapura, TAP durang bisai bah, kalau kan mengeluarkan usin utk membali rumah, lapas atu kalau kan d jual, duit nya balik semula ke TAp bisia... etc.. buat tia implementasi yng bisai2
baz, based on stock market value ended july 2008 do u know which airline has the largest market cap in the world? it ain't american airlines, not british airways, not UAL, not qantas, and neither nor any french airlines despite france being the world's most visited country. its singapore airlines. they compete domestically, regionally, internationally, and win most of the race. try out google finance (http://finance.google.com , type 'SIN:C6L', and compare their airline with other major airlines of the world. also type 'SAU:6050' then check out other major fishing companies in the world. it's all about effective management, combine with solid business plan and intellectual creativity.
airasia was bought out in 2001, came with US$11mln worth of debts and only 2 ageing planes, competing with the so many established competition out there. the buyer wasn't someone super-rich but one who had mortgaged his house for this business. it then follows the model of ireland's ryanair which in turn based its system on america's southwest airlines. no sign it's dying today but instead expanding every month. many american airlines went bankrupted following 9/11, but most have recovered & emerged from bankruptcy. if rba which has been feeding on $billions and already own a fleet of quality planes, suffered huge losses, unable to turnover, and terminating flights every year, then something must be very wrong up there, it deserves better businessmen.
brunei is the smallest country in southeast asia (population), we must accept that we gotta depend on others somehow. countries like monaco, liechtenstein, bahrain, andorra & other tiny nations rarely put self-sufficiency as priority, unless its their main & vital industries where alternate options aren't readily available. even the smallest country, the vatican city, doesn't even think of having farms & garden to support its 1,000 inhabitants. just like owning a business - when we are small, we only buy & resell stuff for profits, or sell something we already have. after we got richer, we setup factories to produce the goods, buying the raw materials now instead. when we grow further, we can then think of extracting the raw materials ourselves, becoming fully-independent in the process. brunei is just quite at end of the first stage. usually though, its only the big countries that venture into the third stage, as they can commit millions of people to work on self-sufficiency.
i ain't sure how wide is our eez (exclusive economic zone) and the quantity of fishes within that areas. i know in south china sea, as international waters, our fishermen will frequently clash with the indons, filipino, vietnamese, m'sians, chinese & maybe taiwanese boats. supply target won't meet expectation as for every one man we put on boat, they can place 300-1000; fishes are caught even before we arrive. despite that still it ain't enough for them, see how frequently the cases of fishing boats infringing others territorial waters in this region, especially the indons & vietnamese? i don disagree that some fishing activities should be carried out to reduce imports, but i doubt whether it can be effectively done on such a scale that seize up 10% of our economy. i'm more towards small but highly-efficient fishing industry.
i hope we can start little, bit by bit. but today is no longer 1960s/1970s where most developing countries just got their independence and getting start up. UN economic stats place brunei economic growth as the lowest in ASEAN for 3 straight years by now. even a more developed s'pore and an impoverished cambodia grow times faster than us. time is not our friend anymore, and we would be sent into oblivion by 2020 if few of them declare themselves a developed country - and we still haven't achieve anything by that time. if that is the case, just like suriname in south america, swaziland in southern africa, or bhutan in indian subcontinents, we would be the last regional destination foreign investments ever consider in their minds.
i read that the crown prince of abu dhabi, wanting a boom like his peer emirate dubai, told all construction firm owners that he wants 'all things done and done right now', and phone them every weeks to check on the development progress. he demands strictly speed & organization; abu dhabi has been growing rapidly in last few years.
on how kids should be taught, every parents have their own ways so i wont go much into that. but in this age, both parent works to meet the rising expenses and kids left to hang out with peers. i ain't sure if we can go back to basics now, unless you say women should stay at home and men as breadwinners, sons fulfilling their traditional masculine roles & daughters feminine roles - everything back to how the last few generation operates, reaching back to ww2 era. however, the reason why s'pore, hk & dubai is so successful is their desire for ultra-modernism and willingness to blend the east & west. i do not think org putih is some sort of concern or danger, for me if it works, be it ideas from the west, indians, africans, hispanics, persians, arabs, chinese, russians, japanese, malays, turks, javanese, mongols or martians, i'll adopt it. where it comes from is irrelevant, getting things done and running is primary for me. we constantly claim western culture as decadent and corrupt, but if we are to look at our own culture - is it complete & perfect, or superior than others? if not why not then blend them together, learn and share from everyone out there?
do not underestimate the power of media, haven't u heard 'controlling the media means controlling the people's minds'? :P most countries place limitations on who can own media companies as it directly affects people's thinking. rupert murdoch, who controls news corp., the world's largest integrated media company, has to take american citizenship before he acquires a prominent US media company. that's the power & fearness of media :)
just like TAP, if brunei's oil & gas retire today, the foreign reserves ($30bn according to world bank's report) can only last 4 yrs :)
"monaco, liechtenstein, bahrain, andorra & other tiny nations rarely put self-sufficiency as priority, unless its their main & vital industries where alternate options aren't readily available. even the smallest country, the vatican city, doesn't even think of having farms & garden to support its 1,000 inhabitants"
lol, had to quote u on ths flawess argument...
monaco is a gambling haven for tourists?
andorra another tourist place, tho i doubt i will ever visit it my lifetime...
bahrain has lesser land than us and no water...
as for licstenstein or watver nd vatican city, surely cant be comparing us with them, they are basically cities or smaller...
we still hav more resources than these esteemed nations and so we shud be aiming for self-sufficiency unlike them.
as for ur praise for singapore and their airlines, so what? they are singapore, brunei s different from them in every aspect of our lives and their approach is also different. we cant even make a simple profit from wat we do...
as for ur support toward ur beloved org putih, what good have they brought to us so far?? tell me, just one org putih who had contrbuted to our country?
as for the family, ofc there's nothing in the religion that says women cant work so pls dun twist my words, they are nowadays bread wnners.. and teachin children must be from the home, not thru the mass media... in islam, women are regarded special and superior, thats y they must be treated with highest respect, not like in the western nation where most of them go around seminaked...
anyway, u can argue all u like about self-sufficiency, the fact is our nation needs to go ths direction and not waste further investments which wudnt be good for the nation and also will surely make losses like all the existing endeavours, so keep things simple, think of the 10 industries that will give as self-sufficiency, will not burden our future generations, will not be making losses, will be self funding, will make our ppl learn about life and good, etc... and dun ridicule the fish industry just yet, give it a chance, rather than building ports or pollution generating factories... i actually wanted to see brunei as a centre of islamic studies where ppl send their children to study instead of jordan or egypt, we have islamic universities, we can bring the scholars, we hav many Hafiz now, alhamdulillah... beigng self-sufficient insyaAllah we can maintain the Abode of Peace. amin
do take note of the following hadiths:
# Monopoly is unlawful in Islam.
# The holder of a monopoly is a sinner and an offender.
# The bringer of grain to the city to sell at a cheap rate gain immense advantage by it, and those who keepeth back grain in order to sell at a high rate is cursed
for those tiny nations; its just a list of countries who have done something successfully for survival, as for us, it has been 30 yrs down the road, and the plan appeared on every NDP. when something drag on unachieved for too long people just lost interest & confidence, and planners lost commitment for it, maybe simply write it down as beauty decoration. in most countries, plan which missed target or expectation for a decade are crossed out as failed.
you won't learn something from others because they are 'different'? if the europeans hadn't learn muslim science, engineering & maths (the arabic numerals today is the best proof they did), adopted and perfected them, they won't advance so rapidly to achieve such a dominant position. similarly, if china hadn't adopt western capitalism in 1980s, it won't grow at such speed to surpass germany as the world's third largest economy early this year. if japan hadn't westernize itself, it would be so different today. cultural differences is not a barrier, we can always master the knowledge & adapt it on our own ways. left it like that and nothing will change.
what org putih have contributed to brunei? maybe these questions can answer some;
1.who first found & helped brunei establish its oil industry?
2.who brought in equipments, technologies & logistic support to help brunei maintain its oil production till today?
3.who provide us with exams like gce o & a level so our students can have world-recognized certificate when they further their studies abroad?
4.boeing & airbus supply us with aircraft so our people can fly, travel & go for hajj? from which countries those 2 companies are?
5.who sell arms, weaponry & defense technologies to our military?
6.the internet you're using now is linked via undersea cable system across pacific ocean from which country?
7.company from which country owns blogspot, that power the blogging platform you are reading now?
8.who helped to setup the 3g system in brunei?
9.who sent up the satellite so u can watch tv now? is it rtb/astro's own rocket technologies?
for fish industry, i never ridicule it, i just have the opinion that it should be a small but highly-efficient one instead, being categorized as miscellaneous rather than main industries. im keen to see brunei developed into a respected industrial nation, thus i dont mind polluting factories. we can convert them to high-tech clean industries later when they grow. it ain't like our seria oilfield (where the fire burns 24 hrs) currently is not polluting. ironically, fishing till it makes up 10% of the economy will too, certainly damage the aquatic/maritime environment. so it's the same, you sacrifice something to get something.
george soros, billionaire & influential fund manager who crashed thai baht in 1997 leading to asian financial crisis: "It's not my job to calculate the consequences of my acts."
carlos slim helu, world's second richest man who virtually 'owns' mexico: "if we are to care about how people judge us morally, we'd be better off dead."
bill gates, now world's third richest man & founder of microsoft: "i don't care about attending church on sunday, i got many other things better to do than that."
if big decision makers are to be constrained by moral or ethical issues here and there, they might as well stay at home, as the people & matters whom they deal with won't sit down and talk that with them. for the 1000 richest person in the world, none self-made billionaires never break the moral & ethical rules, and some of them are richer than countries.
Well said, Mike! Sadly, for those 1000 Richest human beings on earth, they have to finally answer to the penULTIMATE WEALTHIEST LORD of the Universe after they all die, Mike...
But yeah, you're right about almost everything when it comes to worldly achievements, technologically.
lol, i m not talkin abt western influence into our culture such as that education etc,atu semua org benefit, BUT individually each org putihs that came to brunei have been exploiting us, u dun see it??? then u must be org putih urself heheh... as for sharing of knowledge from different cultures and nations,of course, we all take whats good from others, as u mentioned,the west learnt a lot frm the muslim scholars like avicenna
as for the fish industry, where's there's a will there's a way to preserve nature... i mentioned elsewhere,there must be proper implementation... i mean make sure the fishes are properly looked after so they dun become endangered, proper breeding zones etc... i m not much of a fish expert... thats the sad case, we all talk only, when it comes to implementation, be biarkan sja macam atu...
as for ur george soros, he's a philantrophist? he's prolly guilty exploiting so many countries in his lifetime that i think we nid to reconsider why were even in a currency interchageabilty with spore for so long, i m sure we taken advantage of by it :p
an article abt fish few years back, proves the importance of proper management of fishing is crucial to mankind...
'Only 50 years left' for sea fish
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Natural protection
Enlarge Image
There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.
Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.
Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity.
But a greater use of protected areas could safeguard existing stocks.
"The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we've completely gone through the last one," said research leader Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University in Canada.
This century is the last century of wild seafood
Steve Palumbi
Should fish be off the menu?
Send us your comments
"What we're highlighting is there is a finite number of stocks; we have gone through one-third, and we are going to get through the rest," he told the BBC News website.
Steve Palumbi, from Stanford University in California, one of the other scientists on the project, added: "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood."
Spanning the seas
This is a vast piece of research, incorporating scientists from many institutions in Europe and the Americas, and drawing on four distinctly different kinds of data.
Graph of fish decline.
Catch records from the open sea give a picture of declining fish stocks.
In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield.
Bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish are not bringing the world's fleets bigger returns - in fact, the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003.
Historical records from coastal zones in North America, Europe and Australia also show declining yields, in step with declining species diversity; these are yields not just of fish, but of other kinds of seafood too.
Zones of biodiversity loss also tended to see more beach closures, more blooms of potentially harmful algae, and more coastal flooding.
We should protect biodiversity, and it does pay off through fisheries yield
Carl Gustaf Lundin
Experiments performed in small, relatively contained ecosystems show that reductions in diversity tend to bring reductions in the size and robustness of local fish stocks. This implies that loss of biodiversity is driving the declines in fish stocks seen in the large-scale studies.
The final part of the jigsaw is data from areas where fishing has been banned or heavily restricted.
These show that protection brings back biodiversity within the zone, and restores populations of fish just outside.
Click here to see where the evidence came from
"The image I use to explain why biodiversity is so important is that marine life is a bit like a house of cards," said Dr Worm.
"All parts of it are integral to the structure; if you remove parts, particularly at the bottom, it's detrimental to everything on top and threatens the whole structure.
"And we're learning that in the oceans, species are very strongly linked to each other - probably more so than on land."
Protected interest
What the study does not do is attribute damage to individual activities such as over-fishing, pollution or habitat loss; instead it paints a picture of the cumulative harm done across the board.
Even so, a key implication of the research is that more of the oceans should be protected.
Nets on tuna boat. Image: Wolcott Henry 2005/Marine Photobank
Modern fishing methods such as purse seine nets are very efficient
But the extent of protection is not the only issue, according to Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the global marine programme at IUCN, the World Conservation Union.
"The benefits of marine-protected areas are quite clear in a few cases; there's no doubt that protecting areas leads to a lot more fish and larger fish, and less vulnerability," he said.
"But you also have to have good management of marine parks and good management of fisheries. Clearly, fishing should not wreck the ecosystem, bottom trawling being a good example of something which does wreck the ecosystem."
But, he said, the concept of protecting fish stocks by protecting biodiversity does make sense.
"This is a good compelling case; we should protect biodiversity, and it does pay off even in simple monetary terms through fisheries yield."
Protecting stocks demands the political will to act on scientific advice - something which Boris Worm finds lacking in Europe, where politicians have ignored recommendations to halt the iconic North Sea cod fishery year after year.
Without a ban, scientists fear the North Sea stocks could follow the Grand Banks cod of eastern Canada into apparently terminal decline.
"I'm just amazed, it's very irrational," he said.
"You have scientific consensus and nothing moves. It's a sad example; and what happened in Canada should be such a warning, because now it's collapsed it's not coming back."
Schematic map of research used.
1. Experiments show that reducing the diversity of an ecosystem lowers the abundance of fish
2. Historical records show extensive loss of biodiversity along coasts since 1800, with the collapse of about 40% of species. About one-third of once viable coastal fisheries are now useless
3. Catch records from the open ocean show widespread decline of fisheries since 1950 with the rate of decline increasing. In 2003, 29% of fisheries were collapsed. Biodiverse regions' stocks fare better
4. Marine reserves and no-catch zones bring an average 23% improvement in biodiversity and an increase in fish stocks around the protected area
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