BEBD as a ‘One-Stop’ agency to facilitate, support foreign investments

13 May

BEBD as a ‘One-Stop’ agency to facilitate, support foreign investments

13^th May, 2015

WITH the launching of the International Food and Biotech Investment Conference yesterday, several working papers and discussions were delivered in the conference which was held at the Indera Samudra Grand Hall of The Empire Hotel & Country Club.

Assistant CEO of Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), Desmond Lim speaks at the conference.

One of the speakers during the conference was Desmond Lim, Assistant Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), who focused on ‘Invest in Brunei Darussalam’ where he shared on the overview of Brunei as well as information on how to attract investors to Brunei.

He highlighted that the vision of BEDB is to be a leading Economic Development Agency recognised for its professionalism, progression and result-driven culture with a mission to grow and diversify the economy of Brunei by attracting investments and strengthening local businesses, enabled through research and innovation.

Desmond Lim also shared on roles of BEDB as a ‘One-Stop’ agency which will facilitate and support foreign investors in their pursuit of investment opportunities in Brunei, which among them include providing information on the local investment climate, laws, procedures, and project specific information, organise visits and matchmaking meetings for investors and others.

During the conference, he also highlighted that companies established in Brunei are permitted to have 100 per cent foreign ownership and nonetheless, credible partnership is available and potential partners include the Ministry of Finance and local private equity funds.

Apart from that, he also pointed out that Brunei practises strict Halal standards that commit to quality through Halal certification in which in 2010, Brunei was the first in the world to issue guidelines on the manufacturing of ‘Halal Pharmaceuticals’ and is currently finalising similar guidelines for the production of ‘Halal Cosmetics’.

In addition, he also explained that the high quality of life in Brunei can help attract investors and among the attractions are the political stability, absence of natural disasters, stable microeconomic environment (ranked No 1 in the world), good quality of education (ranked No 3 in Asean), clean and green environment (ranked No 1 in the world) for ‘Biodiversity and Habitat’ and (No 2 in Asia) for ‘Air and Water Quality’.

And he also shared several recent successful investors who have invested in Brunei from Canada and Taiwan.

Source: Borneo Bulletin