What would a basic income cost in Brunei?
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Total cost per year
269 million Brunei dollars
about 205 million US dollars
466,330 people × 48 Brunei dollars a month × 12 months
Compared with
- GDP (nominal) (2025)1.4%
Brunei in numbers
Brunei has a population of 466,330 (2025) and a GDP of 19.7 billion Brunei dollars (about 15 billion US dollars) in 2025.
Paying everyone 48 Brunei dollars a month would cost 269 million Brunei dollars a year (about 205 million US dollars), or 1.4% of GDP. The World Bank has no recent central government expense or tax figures for Brunei, so only GDP is compared.
Children only (under 18: 114,873) would cost 66.2 million Brunei dollars a year (0.34% of GDP); adults only (18 and over: 351,457), 202 million Brunei dollars (1%).
Default amount: 48 Brunei dollars a month is the World Bank's international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), converted into Brunei dollars with the World Bank's PPP conversion factor for household consumption (2025) and rounded to two significant figures. It is a reference point, not a policy proposal; change it above.
How to read this
This is the gross cost: the total paid out. The real net cost depends on which taxes fund it, which benefits or tax breaks it replaces and whether the payment is taxed. The population, budget and GDP figures are not all from the same year (see the sources).
Sources for the figures
- Population
- World Bank: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), and population by single year of age 0 to 17 (SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN), 2025
- SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN
- Default amount
- World Bank: international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), June 2025 update
- World Bank: PPP conversion factor, household final consumption (PA.NUS.PRVT.PP), 2025
- Retrieved from the World Bank API on November 9, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Government figures are central government, as a share of GDP in their own year, applied to the latest GDP.