Microsoft to invest 1 billion USD in Malaysia in next five years

Illustrative photo. (Source: AFP/VNA)

The announcement comes after the country in February gave conditional approvals for Microsoft, Google, Amazon and state telecoms firm Telekom Malaysia to build and manage hyper-scale data centres and provide cloud services.

As part of the Bersama Malaysia initiative, Microsoft will establish its first "datacentre region,” which consists of multiple data centres, in Malaysia to manage data from various countries, Yassin told an event marking the launch of the programme.

The investments from these cloud service providers will total 12 – 15 billion ringgit (2.91 – 3.64 billion USD) over the next five years.

"The upcoming datacentre region will be a game-changer for Malaysia," Microsoft Executive Vice President Jean-Philippe Courtois said in a statement, adding it will enable the government and businesses to "transform" their operations.

Under the programme, Microsoft will also assist up to a million Malaysians in getting digital skills by the end of 2023.

Malaysia has defended itself as an investment destination, with the finance minister recently saying it was looking at incentives to help attract more FDI after the country saw FDI plunge by 68 percent last year, the biggest decline in Southeast Asia./.

VNA