The Central Retail Corporation (CRC) is investing THB 50bn ($1.45bn) in Vietnam over the next five years. Announcing the plans in a statement on February 17, Thailand’s biggest retailer also pledged to double its number of stores in Vietnam to 600, spanning 57 of the country’s 63 provinces.

“Central Retail sees Vietnam as a high-potential, key market that has shown continuous economic growth,” said the company’s CEO Yol Phokasub in a statement dated the same day. 

CRC’s Vietnamese business generated 25% of the group’s sales in 2022 which, the company’s statement claims, makes it the largest international retailer in the country.  

PDG launches $1bn data centre plan

Singapore-based data centre provider Princeton Digital Group (PDG) has launched a $1bn investment plan which will see it set up campuses in Indonesia and Malaysia. On February 20, the firm announced its so-called ‘SG+’ strategy and said the first project will be a 96-megawatt data centre on Batam island in Indonesia.

In a statement dated the same day, PDG said the campus on Batam, which is located just 20 kilometres south of Singapore, will be built on 15 acres of land and will comprise four buildings. The SG+ strategy also includes a data centre campus in Malaysia’s southern-most state Johor, which is connected to Singapore by a causeway.

Mexico steps-up lithium nationalisation

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has signed a decree that gives the energy ministry responsibility for the country’s lithium reserves. It follows the government’s April 2022 nationalisation of the mineral, which is essential to the production of electric vehicle batteries.

The decree, signed on February 18, makes it possible for the government to start studies on the extraction of the country’s lithium deposits. “What we are doing now … is nationalising lithium so that it cannot be exploited by ... Russia, China or the US. Oil and lithium belong to the nation, to the people of Mexico,” Mr Obrador said at the time.

The president also declared a lithium mining reserve in the northern Sonora region spanning 234,855 hectares. Last August, the government established a state-owned lithium mining company.