| Azlan Othman |
THE economic growth projection for Brunei Darussalam this year and the next by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as IMF’s recommendations were spelt-out at a briefing on the country’s economic performance yesterday at the Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism (MPRT).
For 2017, the IMF expected that gross domestic product (GDP) for Brunei Darussalam will contract again at a rate of 1.3 per cent, while for 2018, the IMF projected that GDP will increase by 0.7 per cent only.
Meanwhile, the Department of Eco-nomic Planning and Development (JPKE) officials said, the economic performance of the country has shown a negative growth or contraction in recent years. In 2016, GDP decreased by 2.5 per cent, following a 0.4 per cent decline in 2015. The decline was largely due to lower output of oil and gas sector in recent years.
To compensate for the decline in output of oil and gas sector and help efforts to diversify economic activities and generate GDP growth, it was recommended for the output of sectors outside of oil and gas to grow drastically.
Productions outside of oil and gas sectors include agriculture and fisheries; the manufacturing; services; transport (transportation and logistics); info-commu-nications; financial services (banking and insurance); tourism, and trade.
Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Haji Apong, Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism and Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Zulkarnain bin Haji Hanafi, Minister of Health at a briefing on IMF’s reports on Brunei’s economy
Speakers from JPKE, Prime Minister’s Office, during the briefing organised by the Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism and Ministry of Health yesterday. – PHOTOS: AZLAN OTHMAN
The session was organised by the MPRT and the Ministry of Health (MoH), and presented by the JPKE, Prime Minister’s Office.
Present at the session were Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Haji Apong, Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism and Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Zulkarnain bin Haji Hanafi, Minister of Health.
The session has several objectives, namely, to understand the details of the economic growth or GDP calculation generated by the JPKE; to understand the present state of the country’s economic performance as a whole; and to understand how the output of each sector of the ministry will be able to make a significant contribution to the efforts to accelerate the growth of GDP in the years to come.
At the end of the session, officials from MPRT presented a briefing on the ministry‘s target to increase the contribution of agriculture, fisheries and forestry from one per cent of GDP ($200 million) in 2015 to five per cent ($1 billion) by 2020.
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