Moreover, under the global economic downturn, Brunei's economy will still maintain positive growth in the first three quarters of 2020, with the annual GDP of 654.38+06.58 billion Wen Yuan. How did such a small country get rich?
It was not until the 1960s that Brunei discovered exploitable oil offshore. The successful exploitation of oil has changed Brunei's development model, and Brunei has been able to quickly become an oil-rich country from a backward agricultural country.
Brunei's proven crude oil reserves are/kloc-0.4 billion barrels, which is equivalent to Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern countries. Therefore, Brunei is also known as "Dubai in Southeast Asia".
In the 1970s, the fourth war broke out in the Middle East. In order to put pressure on the western countries that support Israel, Arab countries dispatched oil weapons and substantially raised the price of crude oil. With this east wind, Brunei's economic development has suddenly accelerated. By 1974, Brunei's economic growth rate reached 1 1.5%.
Since 1975, the Brunei government has formulated the third national development plan with a solid economic foundation. The goal of the plan is to diversify the economy by raising the level of employment, mainly developing agriculture and manufacturing. During this period, the international oil price is still rising. With the exploitation of natural gas, Brunei's third national development plan has also achieved good results.
However, since the 1980s, the relationship between Arab countries and western countries has been in a delicate stage, which has led to fluctuations in international crude oil prices and a general downward trend. At this time, Brunei's oil export income has accounted for more than 60% of the total income.
The decline in international crude oil prices has also slowed down Brunei's economic development. Therefore, the fourth national development plan has not received the expected results. At the same time, the Brunei government found that all oil and natural gas will be exploited in the next 30 to 40 years.
From 65438 to 0984, Brunei gained political independence and got rid of British colonial rule. Political independence has injected new impetus into Brunei's economic development. The new leadership decided to adjust the economic development model and put forward the fifth development plan.
Brunei is determined to change the single mode of relying on oil and gas exports and increase the proportion of non-oil and gas resources and industries in national development. To this end, the Brunei government has formulated a series of policies and measures to reduce the impact of oil exports on national fiscal revenue.
Brunei's economic system is dominated by public ownership, so Brunei relies heavily on the public ownership economy. In view of the influence of oil export, Brunei decided to relax the restrictions on private ownership economy first to stimulate the development of domestic economy.
However, it is difficult to reduce the influence of the oil export industry. It was not until the Eighth National Development Plan that Brunei's private ownership economy had an ideal scale of development, and the economic development model began to shift from government-led to private-led
Secondly, Brunei vigorously promotes tourism. Although Brunei has a land area of only 5,765 square kilometers, it is rich in resources.
There are 1 1 forest reserves in Brunei, accounting for 39% of the country's land area, of which 86% are virgin forests. The National Forest Park alone covers an area of 48,875 hectares.
In addition, Brunei is located in the tropics, and it is hot and rainy all year round, which is very suitable for the growth of rare animals and plants. In Brunei, a tree can even inhabit more than 400 different kinds of beetles at the same time.
Brunei uses local resources to invest in tourism and build various tourism projects. In 200 1 year, Brunei ushered in the grand occasion of tourism year. While developing tourism, Brunei also pays special attention to environmental protection.
Brunei attaches great importance to forest coverage rate, and formulates a series of measures every year to limit deforestation and log export, and brings forest protection into standardized management. Therefore, the forestry in Brunei only accounts for 0. 15% of the gross national product.
Brunei has adopted a series of measures to reduce its dependence on oil and stabilize its fiscal revenue.
Brunei's internal measures have stabilized the domestic economic development and ensured the country's long-term stability. Externally, Brunei promotes the development of foreign exports within the scope of regional cooperation. Therefore, Brunei joined ASEAN on 1984.
After Brunei joined ASEAN, it maintained good economic exchanges with Singapore, Thailand and other member countries, and also provided Malaysia with a loan of $6,543.8 billion, despite the border dispute between the two countries at that time.
Shortly after joining ASEAN, the Philippine President proposed to build an East ASEAN growth zone under the framework of ASEAN. This is a good opportunity for Brunei to transform and develop an export-oriented economy. Brunei has also made good use of this opportunity to actively carry out various work in the growth zone.
First, Sultans Of Brunei visited neighboring countries and signed a series of agreements and memorandums to develop economic and trade cooperation. The following year, the Philippines also paid a return visit to Brunei, further expanding bilateral economic and trade cooperation and establishing a joint venture company. Secondly, in order to further adapt to the development of the growth zone, Brunei decided to increase infrastructure construction and expand port trade. And opened up a new free trade zone in the port.
After years of hard work, the measures taken by Brunei have slowed down its dependence on oil to a certain extent and promoted the development of diversified economy. However, Brunei's single economic model of exporting oil and natural gas resources has not changed substantially.
Although Brunei achieved rapid economic growth in 1974- 1979 with the help of the east wind of rising international oil, it was a short-term effect after all. When the international oil price stabilized, the disadvantage of Brunei's economic development appeared.
The single export structure model leads to the lack of motivation for Brunei's economic development, and the overall economic development also shows a downward trend. At the same time, this is also the main reason why the fourth development plan failed to achieve the expected results, not only because of the impact of international crude oil prices.
Long-term export of oil and natural gas has seriously unbalanced Brunei's domestic economic structure.
Brunei has a small land area and a high forest coverage rate, and the effective cultivated land area is naturally very small. The cultivated land area in Brunei is less than 1% of the total area. Therefore, Brunei's agricultural development is very weak and its productivity is relatively low.
The total population of Brunei is even less than that of some counties in China, and the economic aggregate is not as good as that of China, but the per capita GDP of Brunei is much higher than that of China. According to the classification of the World Bank, Brunei is still a high-income country.
Despite this, Brunei's population ratio has also seriously affected the economic structure. The service industry accounts for only 8. 15% of Brunei's GDP, and the industrial proportion is as high as 90%. Brunei people generally choose high-paying institutions as management departments, and few people are willing to engage in production departments such as agriculture. This kind of economic structure in Brunei is very unhealthy and easily influenced and impacted by the external environment.
After the Asian financial crisis and the international financial crisis in 2008, Brunei's total oil output value showed an upward trend year after year. Even in 20 12, oil accounted for 67.97% of GDP.
As the saying goes, water can carry a boat and also overturn it.
Although oil has made Brunei a high-income country, it is also more vulnerable to economic globalization than other countries.
The most important oil and gas industry in Brunei is monopolized by foreign companies, and it is difficult for the Brunei government to formulate policies to stabilize the economic structure during the economic crisis, which makes Brunei's fiscal revenue extremely unstable.
Moreover, the Brunei government will choose whether to invest according to the trend of oil prices. This unstable investment model even caused the imbalance of Brunei's economic structure.
In recent years, Brunei has gradually realized the problems existing in domestic economic development. To this end, the Brunei government has re-formulated economic development measures. In 2008, the Brunei government formally put forward the "Vision 2035" national development strategy, which is expected to achieve the national development goals by 2035.
In order to adjust the proportion of economic structure, Brunei proposed to build a free trade zone with high-quality infrastructure and high-quality talents in the "Grand Vision 2035". In order to cultivate high-quality talents, the Brunei government has increased investment and introduced advanced foreign management experience.
20 13, China proposed the "Belt and Road" construction plan. In order to promote the transformation and upgrading of domestic economic structure, Brunei actively responded to China's policies.
During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Brunei sent envoys to China and presented special carpets to Liang Wudi. Later, in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Brunei envoys arrived in China. It can be said that Brunei has a deep relationship with China.
In the new era, cooperation and exchanges between Brunei and China have penetrated into all aspects.
In 20 16, when meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Sultans Of Brunei also explicitly proposed to promote the effective docking of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Vision 2035 and build the Guangxi-Brunei Economic Corridor.
The construction of "Guangxi-Brunei Economic Corridor" includes a series of projects such as port logistics, cold chain transportation and crude oil protection tax.
In addition to the strategic vision, the two countries can also carry out in-depth cooperation in other fields. Brunei's crude oil accounts for 60% of GDP, and China is also a big oil producer and consumer. Under the "Belt and Road Initiative", the two sides can cooperate in many aspects based on the oil field.
However, as we all know, China is an "infrastructure maniac". You can see high-speed trains in China and workers in China all over the world. Therefore, in cooperation with China, Brunei can quickly upgrade its domestic facilities. 20 14 China enterprises went overseas to contract Brunei construction projects, signed land lease agreements, and planned to invest 50 million US dollars. In 20 15, China and Brunei jointly built a sea-crossing bridge with a total length of about 30 kilometers.
At the same time, China is also a big tourist country. Every holiday, people from China can be seen all over the world, and the purchasing power of China people should not be underestimated. Brunei's forest coverage, long coastline and numerous beaches all provide good conditions for the development of tourism.
The development of tourism has greatly promoted the development of Brunei's tertiary industry and increased many jobs. The development of tertiary industry in turn boosted the transformation and upgrading of Brunei's economy.
The two governments signed a memorandum of understanding as early as 2000, which clearly defined the responsibilities and problems arising from tourism. Such regulations are conducive to the healthy development of tourism.
In addition to tourism, China also contracted the mobile network transformation project in Brunei. In just two years, Brunei's network signals have developed rapidly. Created17.2 million Brunei dollars for Brunei, equivalent to13.2 million US dollars. However, in the name of "freedom of navigation", American warships frequently operate in the South China Sea, which leads to the continuous warming of the situation in the South China Sea.
China and Brunei are separated by the South China Sea. The situation in the South China Sea has really affected the economic cooperation between China and Brunei and the joint development of oil and gas resources between the two countries. Even for a while, China's oil imports in Brunei continued to decrease, and China's trade deficit with Brunei turned into a surplus.
This has had a considerable negative impact on the relations and economic development between the two countries. Fortunately, China and Brunei have always been peace-loving countries. After the South China Sea issue, the two sides conducted frequent exchanges and active consultations to solve trade problems.
Brunei knows that the stability of the situation in the South China Sea is the fundamental guarantee for its long-term economic development. Therefore, on the South China Sea issue, Brunei has always maintained a correct position and is not afraid of favoring any country.
At the same time, Brunei continues to improve and develop the "Grand Vision 2035" strategy, and clearly proposes to resolve disputes in the surrounding waters through peaceful means to ensure the smooth implementation of strategic objectives.
Brunei has indeed encountered many problems in the process of economic development, but every time the government can adjust its domestic economic development strategy in time to stimulate new impetus for economic growth.
In recent years, under the construction of the "Belt and Road", Brunei's economic structure has gradually become balanced and its ability to cope with dangers has become stronger and stronger. The transformation and upgrading of Brunei has made the development of non-oil and gas industries more and more prosperous and contributed more and more to GDP.
Brunei is getting closer and closer to the goal of realizing diversified economic development in "Grand Vision 2035", and the total GDP is also hitting a new high year by year. That's why Brunei can be rich.