Brunei Risks Losing Halal Market Edge
By Debbie Too

Bandar Seri Begawan - Brunei risks losing its ace in capturing a leadership position in halal accreditation if it does not accelerate its pace in marketing itself aggressively.

"Speed is essential and these days things are moving faster and faster and things are changing so you have to get out there and understand the market and be relevant to it and you can't take your time, otherwise you'll find that someone else has got that No 1 position," said Dr Paul Temporal, group managing director of Temporal Brand Consulting, who is in Brunei conducting a branding workshop for Asia Inc Forum.

"In theory, Brunei is a small country and should be able to do things really fast, but in reality it's not moving fast enough so I think that it has to try and unlock some of the potential through using speed and flexibility to bring these ideas out," he said. He added that ideas are "very good" and that Brunei is already getting recognition in places like Australia, but the Islamic markets are wide and Brunei should be able to be at the forefront.

The halal market is massive, taking up one-third of the world population and Brunei has done some work with its halal branding, said Temporal.

"(The launch of Brunei Halal Brand initiative is) a good start, and in terms of first mover advantage it's probably got a leadership in those areas like accreditation, so what it's got to do now is to get itself known in further markets because there are competitors like Malaysia and Singapore who are saying that they want to be a halal hub and so on, so the issue now is branding," he said.

"The Brunei halal brand has to be branded and it has to be able to explain to people why (Brunei) is better as a centre for excellence than somewhere like Malaysia or Singapore. This is a country issue as well, there is a need to brand Brunei, because halal is one part of it, but if people don't know about Brunei itself then it will be a bit difficult to get the halal brand out there," he said, adding that Brunei has "an awareness" and people have heard of it, but people are not really aware about what Brunei is about.

He added that the branding of a country will enable it to develop and identify an image which could, in turn, help the industries like the halal brand and the small and medium enterprises who are getting involved.

"If they (the industries) do well, then it will reflect back on where they came from so it's a great opportunity and speed is a factor," he said.

Temporal said that just recently, Singapore announced that it wants to become a financial services hub for Islamic banking and they are ready to do it, and that Singapore is now pushing very hard; while Malaysia is also pushing hard to be a halal hub.

"There are others, so it is a matter of the groundwork being done and everything has been set up so now Brunei has got to do some branding pretty fast to use abroad and defend its position," he said.

The effects of the halal branding success for Brunei will have a ripple effect in Brunei, said Temporal.

"This will lead to an increase in exports, more investment into Brunei, bring in more jobs and more prestige to the country and there'll be many benefits. It'll have a positive impact on every part of Brunei's existence really, so if you've got a strong halal industry, and it's promoted really well, Islamic tourists, for example, will want to come to Brunei for eco-tourism, but they'll also want to come here if they are going to be at the most prestigious halal organised country in the world, so it'll have a spin-off effect on the other industries in the country".

"If Brunei does a good job, it's going to put Brunei on the map, certainly through one-third of the population of the world and others. If you look at the European market, France has 10 million Muslims, the United Kingdom has three million Muslims and there are 100 million Muslims in China," he said. -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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