Brunei Forum part 1
Feeling slightly better after fever and coughs and I know I owe a little review of the Brunei Forum.
Gonna start off with the first two speakers during the seminar session.
Personally, I saw it as a good avenue for networking with over hundred people attending the event to even as far as New York, it would be an excellent platform for our business entreprenuers to create more business opportunities.
Dato Timothy Ong, the chairman of the Brunei Economic Development Board outlined several key areas worth investing in Brunei such as petrochemical, infrastructure, nature-based industry and Islamic banking. He highlighted several high notes that should be taken into consideration when one wants to invest in Brunei such as our long history of political stability, our daily administratiion which are ruled by law, our high education literacy rate and many more.
Those four areas are what investors could look at and I found it pleasantly amusing to the idea of turning Brunei into not just a dot on the world map but actually as a “green dot” which reflects oil, youth and of course of natural environment.
The panelist who attended the dialogue right after the first paper were informative. Big names from Brunei (private sector.. will try to get their full names later) reiterated their experience working in Brunei and emphasised on our good infrastructure and easy access to liquidity. Furthermore, we are governed by the law so its not like we can run off if we are in debt to anyone. And to further ensure, we follow the UK legal system.
The other paper was presented by the Deputy Minister of Industry and Primary Resources where he echoed loudly on the Heart of Borneo project. A lot of things to consider when wanting to venture into this industry here; Brunei as a safe country, one that is close to the nature.
I was a bit annoyed with how the second dialogue ran though, one of the panelist who perhaps is against ecotourism brought up the theory of disrupting lives at rural area. A member of the audience voiced his opinion that the dialogue should had been promoting Brunei as an ecotourism spot. I agree with him, it shouldn’t have been a place to debate the idea of proper ecotourism.
So basically that’s how the first day of the forum went. It was enlightening, an opinion I heard said she learned quite a lot but perhaps it would’ve been good if it was more intimate where one could ask questions without being shy or intimidated.
That’s as far as my review goes for today. Still not feeling well and my mind is working on its own.
Till then, cheerio!!
