Pres. Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. met with executives of cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Malacañang on Wednesday, July 8, to discuss the company’s proposed investment in the Philippines, including the possible establishment of an AWS Region in the country.
The AWS delegation was led by Quint Simon, vice president for public policy in Asia-Pacific at AWS. Also present during the courtesy call was Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) secretary Henry Aguda.
According to the government, the proposed investment could reach up to $5 billion over the next 15 years if the plan pushes through.
The investment is expected to help expand the country’s digital infrastructure, create thousands of high-value jobs, and improve access to cloud services for businesses, startups, and government agencies.
An AWS Region is a geographic area where Amazon operates a cluster of data centers that deliver cloud services such as computing, storage, databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence tools.
Each Region is made up of multiple physically separate facilities, known as Availability Zones, designed to provide redundancy and help customers keep applications running even if one facility goes down.
If AWS sets up a Region in the Philippines, local organizations would be able to run applications and store data on infrastructure located within the country instead of relying on overseas data centers. That could reduce latency, improve performance for users in the Philippines, and help companies and government agencies meet data residency and compliance requirements.
The proposed Philippine investment comes as AWS continues to expand its cloud footprint in Southeast Asia. The company already operates AWS Regions in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, and has outlined broader plans to invest in cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure across the region.
Observers said landing an AWS Region would mark a major win for the Philippines in its bid to attract hyperscale digital infrastructure investments as the government pushes to grow the country’s data center and cloud ecosystem.
