Malaysia on track to achieve RM3.6 bil revenue in data centre industry by 2025 - Teo

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's target to achieve a revenue of RM3.6 billion by 2025 in the data centre industry is on track, judging from the positive signals by the industry players.

Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching said this after a slew of investments involving the development of data centres entered the entry, coupled with expanding operations by existing companies.

"We can see that more people (from the data centre industry) are coming in for this digital economy investment and a lot of data centre (players) who are already here are also expanding their operations.

"Some of them have met me, like GDS IDC Services (M) Sdn Bhd, and they said they are going double their investment in Malaysia. Therefore, I believe that we are now on the right track, with the positive factors and the signals that we are receiving," she told reporters after attending the CloudTech and Data Centre Conference 2024 here today.

It was previously reported that Malaysia aims to achieve a revenue of RM3.6 billion in the data centre industry by 2025 against RM2.09 billion in 2022.

Teo said creating an ecosystem for data centres and cloud services would also mean increasing the number of industry suppliers in the country as well.

"When we have a sufficient number of data centre players in Malaysia, which we are having now, their suppliers would also be interested in coming to Malaysia as well.

"This is an opportunity to create more high-value jobs for Malaysians, and at the same time, to ensure that Malaysia will become the leader in the digital economy in ASEAN," she added.

Earlier, in her keynote address, Teo said Malaysia approved RM114.7 billion worth of investments in data centres and cloud services from 2021 to 2023, creating over 2,325 high-value job opportunities in specialised fields.

Furthermore, RM76 billion worth of data centre-related investments were approved by the Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry via the Malaysian Investment Development Authority from 2021 to March 2024.

"Google, Amazon Web Services, ByteDance Systems, Bridge Data Centres, GDS ICD and Malaysia's YTL Data Centre made significant investments in building data centres in Malaysia, further demonstrating their confidence in our potential," she said.

-- BERNAMA