Data Centres

Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone agreement inked

Will it further accelerate the data centre boom in Johor?

Paul Mah

Paul Mah

— 2 min read
Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone agreement inked
Photo Credit: Bloomberg. Using data from Iskandar Malaysia, Open Street Map.

The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) was officially inked today. Will it further accelerate the data centre boom in Johor?

Singapore PM Lawrence Wong and Malaysia PM Anwar Ibrahim today witnessed the exchange of the agreement for the JS-SEZ.

Benefits of JS-SEZ

Some stated benefits of the JS-SEZ:

  • Work together to attract global investments.
  • Aim to attract 50 projects within 5 years.
  • Ease movement of goods and people.

There will be quarterly meetings by the PMs to review progress and deal with barriers.

Separately, officials in Johor have previously said they expect the zone to create up to 100,000 new jobs and add tens of billions per year to the Malaysian economy.

This will come from:

  • Attracting new investments.
  • S'pore firms expanding, shifting production to Johor.

What of data centres?

We know of the sharp rise of data centres in Malaysia, particularly in Johor, which grew from 10MW to 1,500MW in just 3 years.

For context:

  • JS-SEZ is more than 4x larger than S'pore.
  • Far larger manpower pool.

Notably, a growing number of these data centres have dark fibre connectivity back to data centres in Singapore.

On the flip side, the pay disparity in data centre roles for professionals working in Singapore and Johor has been a growing point of contention.

Top barriers

Still, key barriers exist, according to reports.

  • Traffic congestion.
  • Differing corporate tax: 17% (SG) vs 24% (MY).

Schemes such as passport-free travel and QR-code clearance systems were meant to alleviate processing for the 300,000 people that cross the Johor-Singapore land border daily. But there's been hiccups to getting them rolled out, reports Bloomberg.

For me, I just hope to get my VEP sorted out. In a fit of pique, I spent a good part of a day in Dec running down every rabbit hole to apply for the elusive VEP tag... and came up blank.

I had ran into the dreaded TnG eWallet and NRIC mismatch. There's been no reply from the helpdesk, so I'll probably try again from scratch when I have another day to spare.

What are some synergies you see between data centres in Johor and Singapore?

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