Dato Paduka Lim Jock Hoi, permanent secretary at Brunei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT), is set to become the next secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), it was announced on Monday at the 31st ASEAN summit in Manila, Philippines.
Dato Jock Hoi will serve as the ASEAN secretary-general from 2018 to 2022, replacing Le Luong Minh, who is coming to the end of his five-year term.
The Brunei government proposed the 65-year-old for the job, which is rotated among the 10 ASEAN countries in alphabetical order, with his nomination endorsed by the ASEAN leaders at their meeting yesterday.
Dato Jock Hoi began his career as a lecturer with Brunei’s Ministry of Education in 1977, before heading the trade departments at the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources and then Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade respectively.
He has been a keen champion of regional economic integration, most recently serving as Brunei’s chief negotiator during the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks all the way until its conclusion in 2015.
Dato Jock Hoi is is expected to start his new job in January 2018 at the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta, where he will oversee more than 1,000 ASEAN meetings each year.