Tech powerhouse Huawei plans to invest 700 million baht in establishing its third data centre in Thailand next year, as part of its support for Thailand to become the digital hub of Asean.

The amount is equivalent to the total investment in its first data centre, in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) in 2018, and the second in Bangkok, in 2019.

The announcement was made by Abel Deng, chief executive of Huawei Technologies Thailand, in an address to the "Powering Digital Thailand 2021: Huawei Cloud and Connect" conference at Centara Grand at CentralWorld on Wednesday.  

"We have our mission, which is to grow in Thailand and contribute to Thailand," Mr Deng said. "With our end-to-end solution technology and our global experiences and expertise, we truly believe that we can contribute more to try to support Thailand to be the regional hub."

Huawei had seen the tremendous progress made in the growth of the digital economy in Thailand, starting with Thailand's 4.0 policy, which reflected the country's strong ambition to become a digital leader in the region, Mr Deng said.

However, Thailand's digital economy currently contributed less than 20% to GDP, and there was still a big space to promote digital technology adoption and development in the country.

The digital economy could also help with the country's economic recovery, especially now it had been further damaged by the pandemic, Mr Deng said.

Thailand's digital infrastructure was now ready to be empowered into a leading position, thanks to the government's efforts to accelerate the adoption of 5G  through 5G licence auctions in February.

"We are confident of Thailand's potential to become Asean's first digital hub, and this will help the country's digital economy contribute to 30% of the GDP by 2030," Mr Deng said.