Picture used for illustrative purpose. File

Gulf Today Report 

Microsoft Corporation sets to invest $1 billion over the next five years in Malaysia for setting up data centres, announced Malaysia’s PM on Monday.

In February, Malaysia gave conditional approvals for Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Telekom to set up hyper-scale data centres and provide cloud services.

The announcement comes after Malaysia recorded a 68% decline in foreign direct investment (FDI) last year, the biggest decline in Southeast Asia.

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Malaysia describes itself as an investment destination, it is scouting for incentives to help attract more FDI, added the finance minister.

It has said the investments from these cloud service providers will total between 12 billion ringgit and 15 billion ringgit ($2.91 billion-$3.64 billion) over the next five years.