Brunei's economy slips 0.6 pct in 2015

Brunei's economy continued to decline year on year, this time by 0.6 percent in 2015, owing to a slowdown in the oil and gas sector and the services sector, according to the latest statistics released by Brunei government Wednesday.

This is a further decline from the 2.3 percent year-on-year contraction recorded in 2014 and 1.8 percent contraction in 2013. According to the Department of Economic Planning and Development Board, the decline was due to a 1.6 percent decrease of the services sector and a 1.1 percent drop of the oil and gas mining activity in 2015.

For the fourth quarter alone, the department said Brunei's gross domestic product (GDP) at current prices fell to 4.3 billion U.S. dollars from 5.2 billion U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter of 2014.

At constant 2010 prices, the sultanate posted a negative growth of 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015. The decline was attributed to decreases in the non-oil and gas sector, services sector and the oil and gas industrial sector by 4.8 percent, 0.4 percent and 0.2 percent respectively.

GDP is a monetary measure of the value of all final goods and services produced in a period of time, which is commonly used to roughly determine the economic performance of a whole country or region, and to make international comparisons. Enditem