According to The Verge - .Microsoft Corporation will invest $1 billion over the next five years in Malaysia as part of a new partnership program with government agencies and local companies, the Southeast Asian nation's prime minister (Muhyiddin Yassin) said on Monday.

This investment from the U.S tech giant comes after the country gave conditional approvals for Microsoft, Google, Amazon and state telecoms firm Telekom Malaysia to build and manage hyper-scale data centers and provide cloud services.

It also comes after the country realized foreign direct investments (FDI) plunge by 68% last year, which was the biggest decline in Southeast Asia. Malaysia has defended itself as an investment destination, with the finance minister recently saying it was looking at incentives to help attract more FDI.