Deputy Minister of Investment, Trade & Industry | Member of Parliament for Iskandar Puteri
I would like to congratulate GDS for successfully organising their first Supply Chain Ecosystem Summit. Let me make three brief points with regards to the data centre sector. First, all the stars are aligned. Malaysia is now on the cusp of a second economic takeoff with Johor being the main engine of growth. New investments are coming up in Johor at an unprecedented rate. At this moment, the data centre boom constitute a significant portion of these investments into the state. With thoroughly thought through policies in place to regulate the industry, data centre investments will be one of the key engines forJohor's economic takeoff. With the federal and state governments closely aligned, Johor will transform into an economic powerhouse in the current global economic and investment landscape. Second, whole value chain investment. The investment into data centre infrastructure is massive and growing exponentially. It is time for Malaysia to look at the industry from a whole value chain perspective, rather than just solely focusing on data centres alone. By that I mean we would like to see data centre operators bringing also investors for renewable energy and water while on the “downstream” part, work on research and development (R&D) for data centre equipment as well as application of artificial intelligence (AI) in our daily lives and in the general manufacturing activities. There is an urgent need to bring together Malaysian local equipment manufacturers and the data centre industry so that the data centre boom could benefit Malaysian companies. There are already many Malaysian equipment manufacturers supporting the semiconductor industry and there is no reason why they can't adapt to support the data centre sector. The GDS supply chain summit is a step in the right direction to develop a Malaysian supply chain. Third, creating a sectoral body for better collaboration with the government. The nascent yet rapidly growing data centre sector requires better collaboration and coordination between the operators and the government. This is more pressing given that the generative AI is upending all previous calculus at once. A ChatGPT search requires 10x more energy compared to a Google search. Data centres’ demand for energy in the context of generative AI is new and coming at a rapid fire pace. I call on the key data centre operators, including GDS, to come together to form an association and through which discuss sectoral policies concerning the sector. The data centre boom is akin to building the (regulatory) ship while sailing it. Having a sectoral body to engage the government is of mutual benefit. An effective association could potentially help regulate the potential speculative build. All in all, this summit is the first step to building a Malaysian supply chain for the data centres operating here.
