“That was fun,” says Mr. Junaidi, CAE’s deputy general manager in Brunei.
There is a metaphor of sorts in the simulated crash: Brunei is fast heading back to earth after a joyride fuelled by fountains of oil. Brunei has no income tax, no sales tax and loopholes big enough that many companies pay no corporate tax. It subsidizes basic foodstuffs and sells gasoline for 47 cents a litre. It is the world’s fourth-richest nation in GDP per capita. Oil brought outrageous riches to the royal family, which has accused one of its own of personally squandering $16-billion (U.S.).
But the bounty in the “abode of peace,” as Brunei Darussalam translates to, is starting to run thin. Oil production is down 40 per cent since 2006, while plummeting prices have robbed a good deal of the value from what remains.