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Economy, Money, Banking & Taxes

Money

The Brunei Dollar is the country’s national currency and uses the international currency code BND. One Brunei Dollar can be divided down into 100 Cents. BND 1 is equal to $0.79 or £0.48.

Coins come in 1, 5, 10, 20 and 50 Cent variants with the 1 Cent variant in Copper-Clad Steel and the others in Cupro-Nickel.

Bank Notes come in 1, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000 and 10,000 Dollar variants. The 10,000 Dollar Bank Note is considered to be the world’s most valuable Bank Note with over seven times the value of the next most valuable, the 1000 Swiss Franc Bank Note.

Economy

Brunei’s economy is almost solely reliant on oil and natural gas exportation and is actually the third largest oil producer in the whole of Southeast Asia, averaging exports of over 180 thousand barrels daily, and the fourth largest producer of liquefied natural gas in the world.

Around 53% of Brunei’s exports are in Liquefied Hydrocarbons and 44% are in Crude Petroleum. The remaining 3% is made up of a wide combination of products but is prominently Brunei Halal brand meat, which subsequently is also the first proper attempt to put together a global halal brand.

Banking

Banks in Brunei are widespread and western banks such as HSBC and Barclays are incredibly prominent within the country. These banks offer identical account policies to their current customers and new customers will see something very similar. Banks in Brunei also incorporate the simplified two-account type system typically used in the west with Current Accounts being more flexible but offering a low interest rate, whilst Savings Accounts tend to have higher interest rates but only allow a certain amount of free withdrawals over a certain timescale.

Taxes

Brunei does not impose any income tax on any individuals and the country’s residents will also not see any sort of capital gains, sales, export or payroll tax. However, companies may still be subject to income tax. Additionally, Citizens and permanent Residents in Brunei must contribute 5% of their salary to a state managed provident fund which behaves something like Social Security.

Only properties being used for Commercial means are subject to property tax based on the value of the property. Stamp duties are levied on most documents in Brunei but some documents will require some duty tax based on the nature and size of the document. Most customs duties are also levied except on tobacco, of which there can be over 200% tax.