What could drive data centre growth in the Philippines

The country’s data centre capacity is around 75 megawatts.

The Philippines’ data centre market is a “very small” industry, but it could be a potential host for more facilities due to geographical and political issues in its neighbouring markets.

KMC Savills Managing Director Michael McCullough said there are only around two to three major players currently in the Philippines’ data centre which currently stands at around 75 megawatts (MW), with a planned capacity of 200MW.

McCullough noted that Singapore is under pressure to not have more data centres in the country due to land constraints. According to Kearney, many data centre investments fell into Singapore before 2020 due to its strategic location, business environment, and supportive locations.

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Political issues are also considered for the location, noting that a lot of providers “probably want to get out of Hong Kong,” he said.

“The Philippines is a population of over 110 million. We are a very large consumer of social media, music like Spotify, [and] streaming content both friendly and adult. That's driving a lot of the decision-making to come to the Philippines,” McCullough told Real Estate Asia, adding that the country is also a big gaming consumer which needs data centres as latency is essential for gaming.

According to Savills, the lowest warehouse demand came from the dry storage market which includes data centres at 2.1% of the total. Manufacturing, fast-moving consumer goods and third-party logistics were the top markets in terms of warehouse demand.