SL: Data centre playground amid global turmoil
Setting up data centres in Sri Lanka may prove an opportunity in the wake of the war situation in West Asia, officials say.
Data Centres are a strategic priority to enhance digital sovereignty, reduce external dependence, and position Sri Lanka as a competitive destination for global technology investment, Eranga Weeraratne, Deputy Minister of Digital Economy, told the Sunday Times Business. He added that the growing global demand for digital infrastructure combined with low-latency requirements for India and Southeast Asia, makes Sri Lanka a strong candidate for a data centre hub.
More than 20 interested parties have sent proposals for the Data Centres to the Board of Investment (BOI), responding to the Request for Information (RFI) to support high-performance computing, AI workloads, and national digital services while strengthening domestic data centre capacity.
“We received more than 20 proposals from various parties,” Mr. Weeraratne noted, saying that most proposals are from foreign parties. Last year, global hyperscalers such as Amazon/AWS, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, Huawei etc were in discussion with the ministry to build AI-focused data centres.
The pan-Asian telecommunications giant Axiata Group Berhad is also looking at investing in Sri Lanka’s data centres.
Axiata Group Berhad’s CEO, Vivek Sood, told The Sunday Times Business that Axiata, with Dialog, Sri Lanka’s leading telecom operator, is a strategic investor in the island nation and in their broader investment drive, Sri Lanka has stood out for setting up data centres, he said.
The Government aims to gather insights on investor capabilities, technical solutions, facility scale, and value propositions, as well as the necessary enabling requirements such as land, energy, and connectivity, after which the request for proposals will be issued.
Meanwhile, the Digital Ministry, along with related agencies, is seeking legal clearance to expedite land allocation for potential data centre constructions, with representatives from the Mahaweli Authority, the Digital Ministry, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Water Board, the Ministry of Power and Energy, etc in a committee which met last year, formulated the requirements for land for data centres. “Once the land is identified, the BOI will launch expressions of interest for a data centre to be set up in the country,” an official said.
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