COMMENT | Thorough policies needed for data centre investments

COMMENT | The data centre boom in Johor and the Klang Valley over the past three years has been nothing short of astounding and has led to many international headlines for Malaysia.

However, to fully capture the positive economic spillover and multiplier effects from these data centre investments, we need more comprehensive digital economy and infrastructure-related policies that are better coordinated across the various government ministries and agencies.

I disagree with the general viewpoint that data centres will provide only limited upside in terms of job creation and will only use up much-needed and scarce energy and water resources in the country.

For many of the hyperscalers such as Alphabet (Google), AWS, Microsoft, and Meta (Facebook, Instagram), their data centre investments in Malaysia are part of a larger strategy to increase their workforce and digital economy activities in the country, especially in the cloud and generative artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.

These large-scale investments also present an opportunity to “pitch” Malaysia to the senior leadership team of these global giants, including Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO), Ruth Porat (Alphabet chief investment officer), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) during their visits here.