As ASEAN chair in 2013, Brunei Darussalam has a regional agenda to push forward alongside its domestic plans for the year. Chief among its local priorities is developing alternative resources streams in its economy, which has long been driven by its oil and natural gas revenues. 

Located in the westernmost region of North Africa, Morocco has an impressively diversified economy and in recent years has benefited from steady growth. The country has strong trade links with the EU and has a young population – with the median age of its roughly 32m people at 27.3 years – which in turn provides the country with a large supply of available and comparatively skilled labour.

With oil prices at sustained high levels and the government pushing ahead with a large-scale investment programme to upgrade infrastructure, address social issues and further diversification, Saudi Arabia’s economy is thriving.

While hydrocarbons continue to make up the lion’s share of the emirate’s GDP, oil revenues are supporting long-term efforts to diversify the economy. Oil and gas accounts for about 52% of real GDP, down on previous years, followed by construction, manufacturing and real estate. High-quality transport infrastructure, meanwhile, is boosting trade activity and free zones in Abu Dhabi.

Stretching over 17,500 islands and home to around 245m people, Indonesia is a vast, diverse nation with a rapidly growing economy, extensive natural resources and a range of sectors ripe for investment. By far the largest country in ASEAN in terms of both population and area, Indonesia is responsible for one-third of the 10-nation bloc’s total GDP.