Brunei Overview

Photo credit

tylerdurden1
3:28pm Thursday 11 March

New Zealand maintains a positive relationship with Brunei. Much of the past contact has been in the context of ASEAN (Brunei was New Zealand's ASEAN country coordinator from 1997-2000), APEC and the Commonwealth. The Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership is also a key aspect of our relations with Brunei. These ties have helped efforts to strengthen the bilateral relationship, which now covers many areas including trade, investment, education and defence.

Two-way trade between New Zealand and Brunei is moderate (our 27th largest bilateral trading partner), with trade totaling NZ$499 million for the year ending June 2008. Imports from Brunei are nearly exclusively crude oil, the volume of which fluctuates from year to year. Crude oil imports in the year ending June 2008 reached NZ$495 million compared to NZ$186 million in 2006.

Map of Brunei-Darussalam and surrounding region with ASEAN neighbours marked

Key demographics

Official Name Negara Brunei Darussalam
Land Area 5, 700 sq km
Population 385, 000 (2007)
Capital City Bandar Seri Begawan
Religion Islam
Language Bahasa Melayu / English
Currency Brunei dollar

Key statistics

GDP US$12.28 billion (IMF estimate 2007)
GDP per capita US$50,800 (PPP estimate 2006)
Total exports US$7.23 billion
Total imports US$2.2 billion
Total NZ exports to Brunei NZ$3.4 million (2007-8)
Total NZ imports from Brunei NZ$495.2 million (2007-8)

Sources of data: IMF (GDP data), World Bank (export/imports) and Statistics New Zealand (NZ exports/imports).

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Last updated: 26 February 2009