Malaysia was chosen to host the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) due to its position as an important hub in the Maritime Silk Road, said Alibaba Group Holding Ltd electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) project leader Song Juntao.
Apart from that, he said Malaysia’s aggressive push to develop a digital economy is another reason for the country being selected to host Alibaba’s first eWTP outside of China.
“Both these factors are highly compatible with the eWTP concept, and also allows room for the development of local small and medium enterprises (SMEs),” Song said last Friday.
He also said since the official launch of the DFTZ by Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Razak, many big developers and electronic financial companies have started to move into Malaysia.
“At the same time, training programmes for local SMEs in Malaysia have also commenced,” he said.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong — who paid a courtesy visit to the Alibaba headquarters in China last week — commended Alibaba’s recognition in making Malaysia its first eWTP hub, as it would redefine global trade and the e-commerce industry.
“The DFTZ can help local SMEs enter the global arena, integrate with the overseas market and help move the nations towards globalisation.
“The new concept of retail shopping, cloud technology, big data and so on initiated by Alibaba will enable local SMEs to be more competitive in the international arena, and to be more efficient and compatible,” Wee said.
The collaboration with Alibaba, he said, will make Malaysia’s DFTZ the digital backbone of the nation’s logistics, payments, customs clearance and data integration.
“It will thus become the infrastructure for the development of our nation’s digital economy and a window of opportunity for local SMEs to open up to the world,” he said.
Wee urged local traditional industry players to embrace the digital economy and adopt Alibaba’s five new strategies, which are “new retail”, “new finance”, “new manufacturing”, “new technology” and “new energy resources” — saying it will completely change the pattern for future industries.
Last month, Najib together with Ma flagged off 1,972 SMEs and said the DFTZ would facilitate SMEs to capitalise on the convergence of exponential growth of the Internet economy and cross-border trade.
He reiterated that the DFTZ would increase SME goods export to US$38 billion (RM155.42 billion) and create over 60,000 jobs, in addition to supporting the movement of US$65 billion worth of goods by 2025.
“We want it (DFTZ) to be one of the iconic projects, because digital Malaysia has a growth rate of 18.2% so far and would grow to 20% by 2020,” Najib had said during the launch in Sepang.
The idea of DFTZ was first mooted in Malaysia on Nov 4, 2016, when Ma first visited Malaysia. Malaysian Digital Economy Corp (MDEC) had reported that the DFTZ will be a boost to Malaysia’s e-commerce roadmap that was introduced in 2016, which aims to double the nation’s e-commerce growth and increase the gross domestic product contribution to RM211 billion (or approximately US$47.68 billion) by 2020.
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