| Danial Norjidi |
BRUNEI has been an attractive market and the company believes the Sultanate has a bright future, says Dr Armin Bruck, President and CEO of Siemens Pte Ltd.
Siemens sees a good future for Brunei, and is ready to support potential foreign direct investments (FDI) in the country by offering efficient and productive implementation of projects.
Dr Bruck recently in an interview with the Borneo Bulletin discussed Siemens’ activities and plans in Brunei as well as what it can do to support the implementation of FDIs.
Siemens has been in Brunei for nearly 20 years and is active in all its divisions, especially Power and Gas, Power Generation Services, Health, Energy Management, and Building Technologies.
They are represented locally through a local office and also have a team of local business partners.
Following are Dr Bruck’s responses to Bulletin’s queries.
Q: What can you say about Siemens’ presence here in Brunei?
A: Basically, it’s always a similar approach we have in new countries. One of the first businesses to enter is nearly always healthcare. Our healthcare business is probably what established Siemens’ business in this country, and up to today it’s pretty successful, and all of your hospitals are more or less equipped with Siemens technology.
As we go up the value stream in our business, usually the next one to come, because you need it for each and every economy, is power – power generation and power distribution. This was the same here in Brunei, where we are since many, many years. And going forward, we had a lot of business also with Shell, which is a key account not only in Brunei, but is a global key account.
So now in the last years we decided to invest a little bit more in terms of people and in terms of a dedicated country manager, which is Kamaljit Singh, to also take care of the many other businesses Siemens has which are energy management and building technology. Maybe going forward on a long term basis there might also be for mobility and traffic management solutions, because traffic and crowded roads is a picture you find everywhere in Asia nowadays, which also hamper the success of modern economy.
This is a little bit of the vision we have going forward. So the main business is still healthcare, energy, power generation and distribution, and then as I said, business to come is probably building technology.
As we have highlighted during our 15th anniversary celebrations in 2014, we are always looking for an opportunity to offer Siemens as a development partner of Brunei.
We see Brunei as a very important market for us in the region and it plays an integral part in our growth strategy. Since our last milestone, we have been engaging more with private and governmental stakeholders, doubled the number of partners and to accommodate this growth have also moved to a new and bigger facility to address these engagements.
Dr Armin Bruck, President and CEO of Siemens Pte Ltd. – BAHYIAH BAKIR
Q: What does Siemens have to offer in terms of urban infrastructure development?
A: Siemens’ intelligent infrastructure systems improve efficiency, lower cost, increase resiliency and bring environmental benefits. Our intelligent technologies can boost the performance of Brunei’s infrastructure systems like transportation, water, electricity and buildings.
Some examples of what these intelligent infrastructure systems can do are: Intelligent urban transport solutions can reduce congestion, accidents and CO2 emissions by up to 20 per cent; building management systems can reduce energy consumption of buildings by up to 40 per cent; smart energy management technologies can reduce transmission losses and balance loads in order to accommodate increasing demand without the need for extra power generation capacity. They also enable the integration of decentralised power at 40 per cent less cost.
Q: How can Siemens support foreign direct investments?
A: We provide the full value chain for these customers who bring the FDI, be it in the factory setup, be it in electrification, be it in the automation of their factory to make their factories highly efficient and productive.
Siemens are represented across the value chain – from power generation, energy management down to an industrial plant’s building safety and security system and can play a part to provide value and optimised solution for any part of the process line – be it in oil and gas, food processing, chemicals etc.
Not only technically, but if a development fits Siemens’ long term plans, we’d be open to have a discussion and consider being an equity partner. This is not new to us, and we have committed to joint developments not only in the region but worldwide.
Q: What would you say about Brunei as a prospective destination for FDIs?
A: I understand it’s, first of all, from a geostrategic position which is quite interesting for many investors. It’s also supported by a lot of government initiatives to make it financially viable and attractive for investors.
Having oil and gas by nature attracts certain industries, like the fertiliser industry for example, or whatever is combined with refinery industry. For such industries, Brunei could be a good destination.
And then, coming from there, automatically a second level of industries might follow.
Q: Going forward, what can we expect from Siemens in Brunei in the future?
A: Once a foreign direct investment is ready to start, we are definitely there to support them, to make the implementation highly efficient and productive for them, which is important.
Siemens is always open to play a consultancy role, this is something I have offered before and my team here has also walked the talk and engaged various stakeholders here in Brunei providing useful information and updates of technology availability that is being introduced rapidly. We will continue to do so directly or with our valued partners representing our various markets.
We are always on the lookout for more local presence and will continue to build this base with local partners and distributors.
Q: Do you have any advice for SMEs in Brunei?
A: The advice is to get in touch with us, because Siemens has launched a new initiative called next47. It is to support SMEs, especially star-tup companies to get in touch with Siemens, where Siemens might think about minor investment in the start-up, not touching them too much but offering them advice and to go to market in the months and years to come. So it’s to have early enough contact with promising SMEs and start-up companies and to profit from one another.
We find start-ups all over the place, so it’s not so much about the geography, it’s about smart ideas. It’s about having smart ideas which probably somehow interconnect with vision for the future technologies, and this is a fantastic collaboration.
It’s about autonomous driving, it’s about artificial intelligence. These are two examples of key industries and technologies where we are interested.
SMEs can find it on our website, but they can also contact our country office, and we will connect them with the right people.
Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?
A: Brunei has been an interesting and attractive market for us and usually Siemens likes to stay for a long while, and normally comes to stay, so we believe in the future of Brunei. Maybe the actual time is a little bit challenging connected to the oil price but we strongly believe and we see certain indications in the market that this might improve in the near future.
So we are here, we are ready to support government stakeholders as well as investors in your market and together we can probably make a really viable and promising business.
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