Malaysia bids to become Southeast Asian digital hub in collaboration with Microsoft

THE MALAYSIAN government has announced its intention to come up with a feasible and positive strategy to make Malaysia the digital hub of Southeast Asia.

Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz revealed this in informing that he will hold a meeting with Satya Nadella, the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, on the matter

"The 'Kekal Bersama Malaysia' (Stay With Malaysia) initiative is witnessing a collaboration between Malaysia and Microsoft to make our country the digital hub of Asean," said Tengku Zafrul through a post on his X account today.

He added that Satya will visit the country soon to strengthen the collaboration.

“Looking forward to closer collaboration with Microsoft to drive Malaysia’s leadership in the Asean digital sphere,” Tengku Zafrul said.

Satya succeeded Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as the multinational technology company’s chairman.

The Hyderabad-born technology icon is scheduled to deliver an opening keynote address on the new era of artificial intelligence (AI) at ‘Microsoft Build: AI Day’ at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on March 20.

According to the government, the presence of renowned global digital companies and global market leaders in Malaysia has given an important signal that the country has the attraction and conducive investment ecosystem for digital investments.

Investments in digital projects are expected to create jobs for 36,553 local citizens.

Hence, the government needs to facilitate as best as possible the potential digital investments without any compromise on aspects related to data security and national sovereignty.

The National Investment Council, which is chaired by Anwar, had discussed at its meeting last month the direction of investments in line with the development of the digital economy.

It identified the digital sector as among the key economic sectors in strengthening the country’s investment agenda.

The digital economy in Malaysia contributed to 23.2 per cent of the gross domestic product in 2021 and is projected to rise to 25.5 per cent by 2025.

For the 2021-2023 period, a total of 396 digital-related projects were approved with investment value of RM128.9 billion, which included projects approved through the National Committee on Investments (NCI), which comes under the National Investment Council..

Among the digital investments approved were for data centres, cloud computing, data hosting, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence. – The Vibes, March 15, 2024