Brunei's Latest Official Statistics Book

It has been a while since I last posted anything about books published in Brunei Darussalam. There has been quite a number actually. I was forced to read about two plastic bags worth when I had to chair the committee to decide who Brunei's SEA Write Awards nominee and the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore MASTERA award. That was a lot of fictions and literary works which I had to go through. However this book which I am recommending is not a literary work and neither is it a work of fiction. It is the latest official statistics yearbook issued by the Economic Planning and Development Department of the Prime Minister's Office. The Department is responsible for the publication of any kind of government statistics. This one is interesting as it is divided into 15 parts:

 

a. Population and Vital Statistics

b. Labour Force

c. National Accounts Statistics

d. Prices

e. International Merchandise Trade Statistics

f. Foreign Direct Investment

g. Government Finance

h. Financial Services

i. Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

j. Mining

k. Electricity and Water

m. Transportation and Communication

n. Education

o. Health

k. Miscellaneous

 

Did you know that Brunei in 2011 has 608 doctors versus 393 in 2007? The number of dentists have grown from 81 to 95 in the same time and nurses from 1,915 to 2,583. But pharmasists have only grown from 42 to 48. NO wonder the queue for medicine has grown much longer.

Our Dewan Bahasa has a total of 656,162 books and a decreasing memberships.

In 2010, 3,788 crimes were reported to the police of which 28% were solved. The good news is that crimes 'against human body' has a 79,1% success rate. In 2011, 4,891 crimes were reported of which 27.2% were solved.

The government surpluses (excess of revenues over expenditures) were $7.22 billion in 2011/2012. It was $3.68 billion (2010/2011), $650 million (2009/2010), $5.99 billion (2008/2009) and $4.63 billion (2007/2008).

Foreign Direct Investment in Brunei was $1.5 billion last year up from $853 million the year before.

We have increased our rice production from 982 metric tonne in 2007 to 1,480 metric tonne in 2011. Vegetables went up from 9,792 metric tonne in 2007 to 12,964 metric tonne in 2011. But fruits came down fromm 4,372 metric tonne to 2.627 metric tonne.

There are many other statistics that I could have drawn from. Get the book from JPKE during office hours and read it for yourself.