Amazon Web Services will create the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) region to “meet the growing demand for cloud services across the country and help organizations of all sizes accelerate their digital transformation,” Amazon said in a statement Tuesday in Wellington.
The construction, operation and maintenance of the data centers will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs per year and, according to Amazon, will add about NZ$10.8 billion to New Zealand’s gross domestic product. The timing of the investment is not specified.
New Zealand is seeking to attract more foreign investment to revive a sluggish economy that fell into a deep recession last year and has failed to regain momentum since. The government has reformed planning laws to speed up approvals for new projects and changed visa policies to attract foreign investors and entrepreneurs.
Prime Minister Christopher Lacson, who attended an event in Auckland on Tuesday, noted that building in New Zealand was 20% more expensive than in Australia, which was why planning laws needed to be changed.
Local media reported that during the event, company executives and advisors declined to reveal details of the plans, including the location of future data centers.
The new region will provide existing customers such as Xero and Kiwibank with “a local option to run workloads, store data, and deliver digital services with even lower latency,” allowing them to develop new cloud products faster, Amazon said in a statement.
Lacson noted that the investment plan was first announced almost four years ago, but stressed that today is the official launch and the investment is of great significance to the country.
“It’s been a few years, I don’t deny that,” he told reporters. “I’m glad that a major international investor has come to New Zealand. That’s what we want to see more of, and it fits in with the priorities of the current government, which welcomes investment into the country because it creates jobs.”
Source: Bloomberg