Brunei business

"Ali-baba" business is rampant in Brunei.

One estimate that only less than half of the businesses registered in Brunei, are active. Of these, majority are "Ali-Baba" business where local Malay "lend" their names to Indians and Chinese, who actually run the business. In other words, they are the sleeping partner. The advantage for them is, receiving either or both, a monthly "salary" or % of share in the business.

This seemed to be the accepted practice in Brunei. The Government policy has always been giving preference to "bumis" in businesses in order to make the Malays more entrepeneurial. One can look at this as one of the ways to become entrepeneurial - getting $$ for doing nothing. Hey, that's good business isn't?

At the end of the day, is this what the higher authorities wanted? A society whose mentality is to depend on others to do things for them? Despite the rhtoric that Bruneians should develop SMEs, etc., etc.,... in the end, they still depended on the others to do the job. Why do co-operatives failed... it's because the "indian mafia" who run their business non-stop from morning to the next morning - screamed a quite well-known but discredited 1960s government scholar to the UK... hmm... sounds like the Mat Salleh who want to close their shops early so that they could go to the pubs later in the evening...

Kalau diaorang rajin, so macam mana tah? Even nasi katok is everywhere because there's demand for it... and who is manning these nasi katok - Indonesians, of course, so who's blame???