KUALA LUMPUR, The government will ensure the effective usage of water and electricity in line with the increase in data centre investments into the country. Deputy Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Liew Chin Tong said the effort was to ensure the security of electricity and water supply was controlled and used effectively. He said the National Investment Council had in June agreed with the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) that the improvement of data centre investment acceptance policy should be done based on several factors. "Among them is to provide guidelines for power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE) as well as an adequate supply of renewable energy to facilitate the investment of artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in our country. "MITI and MIDA were also directed to create a local vendor programme to develop the digital ecosystem as a whole," he said during a question and answer sessi on at the Dewan Rakyat today. He was replying to a supplementary question from Datuk Shamshulkahar Mohd Deli (BN-Jempol) about efforts made by MITI and other agencies to oversee investments in data centre. Liew stressed that there is a positive trend on AI investments in the country with commitments from global technology giants such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Nvidia, Microsoft and Google. "Through AI-related investments, MITI and the government aim to develop a comprehensive digital economy ecosystem and promote the use of AI technology in a variety of fields, including in the smart manufacturing industry," he added. Source: BERNAMA News Agency